Content Warnings

Ableism
Alcoholism

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The Opposition. One of many names they’ve adopted over the last four decades. The only one that stuck, shorn of preamble and pretension.

‘The Oppos’ to those who dutifully disdain them as terrorists, a legally proscribed organisation, fools and lunatics who have by intention or deed placed themselves beyond the pale of acceptable discourse. His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition — HMMLO — for those who enjoy the flavour of bitter irony. The Real Opposition, the ar-oh, but only ever in private whispers, among those few who agree with the sentiment behind that name.

After Harding’s betrayal of the waking world, after the fall of London, after the inception of Dream Control and the necessary suppression of those who may dream too deep, there is no political opposition left in the Oxford Parliament. The ‘opposition party’ on the benches is mere formality. It matters not who is elected Prime Minister, nor which colour of rosette holds majority in the chamber; certain matters are forever beyond question. The boot presses firm on the English neck, and there is no alternative. Dream Control will still operate as a state within a state, the viscous web of intelligence agencies beneath the polluted soil of British politics will thrive on in their parasitic life, and any people who stray too far will be locked away in Isolation & Observation, for the sake of public safety.

In England one cannot read much about the Opposition, except when they are assigned blame.

Dreamers go uncaptured; inmates break out of I&O; ghouls are found festering in their nests beneath places they should not be; glass-eyed horrors slither out of the North Sea; teenagers go missing in new-sprouted woodland which wasn’t there the previous night; the ancient landscapes of Wales and the Highlands grow ever more dream-afflicted, their hills and valleys forever resisting re-mapping; slivers of Nightmare wander from unknown overlaps. All these and more are attributed to the Opposition. Corruptors of the youth, killers of the elderly. Men in balaclavas running around with foreign guns, crazed women waving placards, eccentric boffins penning deranged manifestos.

The Americans can afford their freedom of speech and the Europeans can prance about with their human rights, but only because Britain holds the line. This is England, the only front that matters, in a war for the collective human soul.

Those who don’t understand, they would feed us to the Dreamlands, turn all England into an extension of London’s noxious corpse.

Truth is more complex, easily accessed with a good VPN.

The Opposition began as actual political opposition in the late 80s, a small group of MPs who disagreed with the post-crisis coalition government and the new Dream Control laws. Some were arrested, sent to the first iteration of I&O. Others recanted, a few were drummed out of their seats. A handful went underground, stopped being politicians, became the nucleus of something else.

They announced themselves in ‘91 with a semi-successful counter-raid against a Dream Control team, leaving seven people dead and twenty one wounded, bystanders included. Active but unpopular in the 90s, equated with the IRA, mocked and derided after the end of the The Troubles and the Good Friday Agreement. Only the English would make peace with the Provos so we could fight ourselves instead. But the Opposition never bombed anything; they assassinated DC officers and organised breakouts, in the days when that was easier. Their numbers grew with bereaved parents, iconoclasts, would-be Dreamers, paid agents of foreign powers, and those who simply could not bear to watch England chained.

But the 2000s were not kind to them, their numbers shrank as England grew ‘safe’. A relic of a former age, they printed banned literature and posted it online, then fell foul of the backwash during the War on Terror. Clandestine cells still cower up in the Highlands, hiding in holes deep in Wales, where reality is thinner and the dream lies close. They established themselves in exile, in Dublin and Calais, collapsing into unthreatening jesters on the international lecture circuit.

Fifteen years ago you could joke about them, but things have changed in the last decade, though it is hard to say why. Nowadays the Opposition barely seem to exist at all other than as a cautionary warning, blamed for everything, given credit for nothing.

But wearing a shirt with ‘HMMLO’ printed on it will get you a trip to an I&O cell, and the government refuses to explain their reasons.

Rumours flitter online, that there’s more members of the Opposition than the British government can track. People go missing deep in the countryside, especially in Wales, and not always into the dream. Graffiti pops up in the strangest places, with slogans nobody understands — ‘Bolster Sees You’, ‘The King is Coming’, ‘Death to False Witness.’

The Opposition still exists, though no sensible young woman from the heart of the Home Counties would dare sketch their shape, nor question their assumed irrelevance.

And now they want us — we magical girls — to disable a nuclear bomb for them, so they can declare their guerrilla war is back on.

An hour ago I didn’t care. I had no image of my future, certainly not as a terrorist.

But now I am to be left on the sidelines, a cripple who cannot contribute.

Intolerable.

Everyone else is still shouting about the nuke, sound and fury without purpose. Grimgrave looks ready to leap onto the table and stamp her feet. Bright twists with frustration, coughing and spluttering to be heard. Nerys has gone up on her hind legs, hissing and rasping, joined by a chorus of chitter-chatter from the zoogs. Signal raises her volume, skeleton-mounted screens flickering through angry emotes.

Phantom pain locks my invisible right arm tight against my ribs, every long-gone muscle a steel cable about to snap. Cramp stabs into my stump, deep inside my shoulder, digging into the side of my neck. Grit my teeth. Jaw creaking. Weight on my chest.

Useless child. Half-dead cripple. Would only get in the way.

I pick up my coffee mug, the one I knocked over, empty but for a gritty brown film.

Raise it high, above my head, then bring it down against the metal table with all my might. A heavy clank of thick ceramic on solid metal. Once, twice, three times — clank, clank, crash! On the third strike the mug shatters with a deafening explosion, chunks and shards of white ceramic flying into the air, skidding across the table, tumbling to the floor, trailing droplets of coffee dregs, leaving me holding the severed handle.

The shouting stops.

Grimgrave boggles at me, starts to laugh. Bright stares, dull curiosity. Nerys drops back onto all fours, tilts her snout to one side, examines me with one big glossy black eye. Other zoogs scatter, burrowing deep into the hidey-holes of the domesticated corner, dropping down onto the sofas, sheltering behind the cushions. Signal’s skeleton freezes, switches to a new emote.

( ´･_･`)

Panting, sweating, shaking, as if I’ve just sprinted a hundred feet. Blood drips from a gash on the side of my left palm.

“Oh, Octavia, lass,” Signal purrs with instant motherly concern. “Why did you have to go and do that? Look at your left hand, you poor thing, you—”

“Because,” I snap, taken by the iron in my own voice, “if you three cannot get through a single strategy meeting without yelling over each other, how are you going to do anything else?” I gesture at the skeleton-screen, the grainy photograph of a nuclear bomb. Droplets of blood shimmer on the metal tabletop beneath my hand. “Let alone that.”

I drop the mug handle, examine my wound. Shallow cut, barely a scratch, welling up with so much blood. I wipe it on a napkin, crimson on white, try to wrap the fabric around my hand without the use of my right.

Grimgrave says, “She’s got a point, yo! Occy, you’ve got a point, like! Fuck, look at us, girlies, we’re a mess!”

Signal lets out a deep sigh, speakers a-crackle. “Tissy’s not going to be happy about that mug. Octavia, lass, please take a deep breath. Let me bind that cut, please—”

“Are you even listening?” I snap at Signal, my voice a strangled stutter of frustration. Can’t get the anger out, can’t point it at the right target; phantom pain won’t ease down, jabbing into my side, reaching for my heart. “Is this the first ‘meeting’ you’ve ever had? The first time you’ve seriously sat down to talk strategy? Hm? Yes? I’m not hearing a no, Signal.”

“Octavia, we understand, but please—”

“You three, you’re a wreck. What passes for your ‘teamwork’ is terrible. On the hospital rooftop, against the Trio? Shambolic, that’s what it was. Don’t misunderstand me, I am grateful for the rescue, or I would be worse than dead. But your teamwork, it was non-existent. That fight was a disaster, a clusterfuck. It was a miracle Grimgrave didn’t die. You, Signal, you and Bright—” I try to point with my right hand, forget it’s not there, hiss with pain as my phantom limb refuses to move. “Uuunnghh!”

“Occy!?”

“Octavia—”

“Let me fucking finish!” I snap. “You and Bright! You left Grimmy alone to fight Scarlet. You went off on your own individual duels like you were fighting for your honour or something. And now you can’t even get through a meeting. The first surprise and you all start yelling!”

Silence. Stillness. The hum of 3D printers. No moon-wind today, quiet weather over the Montes Alpes. My own ragged breath overpowers all else.

Bright grunts. “You got better suggestions, stumpy?”

“Yes, in fact, I do, and it’s not even difficult. Signal, you have the numbers, all those skeletons, you should have been distracting the Trio, keeping them off-balance, assisting Bright and Grimmy. Bright, when you’re transformed you can clearly take a staggering amount of punishment, I watched you tank everything Azure threw at you, but to what end? You fought like an idiot because all you cared about was reaching Scarlet. And you probably could have gotten what you wanted if you’d only focused on Azure properly. And no!” I tap the table with my fingertips when Bright starts to growl. “I don’t care that Azure had you contained, it should have been a group effort. You’re all at fault. You should have tanked. Grimgrave should have been hit-and-run. Signal should have been distraction, possibly command and control, coordinating the rest.” I heave out a great huff, square my shoulders, wish I could fold my arms. “Why am I the one suggesting this? Why have none of you figured this out? Hm? That’s not a rhetorical question.”

Bright simmers down, a difficult frown. Grimgrave wolf-whistles.

Signal clears her throat. ┻┳|･ω･)/ “Were you keeping that critique bottled up all this time, lass?”

Avert my eyes, heat in my cheeks; not sure what came over me. “Not exactly. I hadn’t even thought about it, not consciously. I would hope it’s obvious.”

“Well,” Signal says, oh so very reasonably, “you’re right about one thing. That was our first time working together as a team. Myself and Bright, we’ve worked well before, but maybe that doesn’t count, not in the same way. That was our first open melee against other magical girls. Please understand, Octavia. We might seem like experts, but we’re really not.”

The camera-lens eyes of her skeletons reveal nothing, just my own reflection in dark miniature; neither does a glance at the ‘real’ Signal, perched in her computer chair, unreadable, expressionless, staring at our faces on her screens.

“Yeeeeeeuuuuuup,” Grimgrave says. “First time doing it all together, yo. Gotta work out the kinks!”

“What do you want me to do?” I say. “Apologise for being mean? If you three can’t work together properly then the next open melee might be the last. Or you’ll get nuked, whichever.”

Signal’s emote changes again: ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) One of her skeletons walks over to the table and starts picking up the pieces of shattered mug. I can’t bear to watch, turn away until she’s done.

“Thank you, Octavia,” Signal says, gentler than I deserve. “No, really, I really mean it, I do. Thank you for being honest. You’re probably right, we don’t work together very well, and if we don’t acknowledge that then we’re going to … take casualties. It’s difficult to plan things in advance, difficult to rely on each other, difficult to keep that in mind. Which is a big part of why I wanted to have this meeting. If we’re going to do something so important, we need to all work together.”

Difficult to rely on each other when so many of ‘us’ have died on such short notice. Difficult to count on each other being there tomorrow. Signal leaves that unsaid, but now I’ve seen the graveyard, now I understand. Signal lost her twin; I can barely imagine. My frustration dribbles down to a tolerable level, drained by regret.

Bright snorts, face full of snot. “Yeah, let’s get all happy clappy with each other. That’ll let us soak a nuclear explosion.”

Grimgrave claps her hands together, as loud as she can; Bright flinches in slow motion. “Maybe it will!” Grimmy says. “Fuck do you know, shit-brains? Cock-breath. Dragon-dick-hole-rip-bitch—”

“Signal,” I say. “Should you even be telling us this?”

(゜-゜) “I’m sorry, Octavia?”

“All of this. The Opposition’s plan, the island, the I&O facility, all of it. Surely you’ve heard of operational security. This thing is three months away, yes? That’s plenty of time for early warning. If any hint of it leaks, it’ll be a disaster.”

The real Signal stops typing for a second. She shifts in her chair, a gentle sound of creaking leather.

“I trust everybody in this room,” the skeleton-speakers say.

Then why do you have so many cameras on us?

“You’ve known me a single week,” I say. “I was the personal toy of a Dreamer. I had a dream-parasite in my head, probably for ten years. Did you forget that? Overlook it? Decide it didn’t matter? Maybe I have another one in my head, have you checked?”

“We did examine you, yes,” Signal says with such infinite gentleness, sets my teeth on edge. “After you passed out, we made sure. You’re clean now, Octavia. I promise. I think we can absolutely rule that out, you don’t have to worry about—”

“That’s beside the point!” I snap, slap the table, hiss with pain at the shallow wound on my left hand; half a bloody hand-print smears across the metal. My temper goes down hard, a deep breath to keep it in check. “I’m not the one who should be worrying. How do you know I won’t … I don’t know, take this information to DC and try to buy my life back?”

An absurd suggestion, hanging in the air like a rancid smell, to which nobody replies.

My life is not merely gone, it wasn’t real in the first place. No betrayal can bring back the Willow of my dreams. No bargain can make me small and unknown and unnoticed again. No welcome can return me to England, because the England I would rather live in never existed.

“You’re one of us, Octavia,” Signal says after a moment. “We all trust you.”

Bright mutters, “Speak for yourself.”

Grimmy bounces over to me, threatening a spontaneous hug; she is still immune to all the toxin I can muster, but a raise of my bloodstained hand wards her off from throwing her arms around my shoulders. Not what I need right now, Grimmy.

Or maybe I do. I am being a petulant little bitch, spewing frustration in every direction but the one I want. Perhaps I should bury my face in Grimgrave’s tank top and smear my bloody hand-prints all over the white fabric of her shorts, knead her like dough, chew on her shoulders, make her whine.

She would let me, if I turned to her and reached out. She would do it in front of everyone. She would let me stain her.

“I have an obvious question,” Bright drawls. “Why do they have a nuclear bomb at this place?”

Signal’s emote switches: ¯\_(°_°)_/¯

“We,” she says, “and by we, I mean myself and the Opposition intelligence, we aren’t certain. The moles on the inside don’t have access to the necessary clearance levels, and the compromised facility directors aren’t so compromised that they’re willing to spill the beans about the bomb, so to speak.” Signal’s voice bounces with a false little laugh, then resets back to normal. “We can only assume that whatever experiments they’re doing at Facility Seventeen, they present a high risk of containment failure. High enough to justify nuking Scotland if something goes wrong. Which is all the more reason to shut it down.”

“Shiiiiiiiit,” Grimgrave says. “And we’re gonna crack it open? Just to, like, see what comes out?”

“That’s the other reason the Opposition want us on hand,” Signal says. “To contain the fallout. Oh, uh, poor choice of words, I am sorry, ladies. There won’t be any literal fallout.”

Grimmy giggles. “Says you!”

Bright huffs a slow, clotted breath. “The moment we turn up, every magical girl from Edinburgh to Oxford is gonna know. The Trio’ll be …” She pauses, blinks once. “Oh. Right. Clever.”

Grimgrave squints. “Eh? What’s clever?”

“Not you,” Bright murmurs.

“Bait,” I say. “If something goes wrong, half a dozen magical girls — not to mention the Trio — will already be on the way, to contain whatever the nuclear bomb was meant to handle. If everything goes right, we keep the Trio off the Opposition long enough for them to finish the job, free the inmates, send the Dreamers off to the dream, all of that stuff. If everything goes wrong, the Trio cleans it up. Right, Signal?”

(*＾▽＾)／ “Correct! Well done, Octavia, you do catch on quick, lass. It’s so refreshing to have another strategic mind on board.”

A sigh, a big one. “Risky,” I say. “Too many moving parts. One thing goes wrong and the whole plan falls to pieces. And that’s just our—” Our? Your. “-part. What about the Opposition? This is all so much bullshit, we can’t pull this off. Real life is not a Call of Duty game. I assumed you were the sensible one, Signal. Appearances deceive.”

Bright exhales through her nose, almost a snort. Did I make her laugh?

“Lass,” Signal says, not a hint of offence in her voice, “I assure you, I’ve sat down with the Opposition and gone over this from every possible angle. And the Opposition aren’t what you think, they’re not like they used to be, they haven’t been that way for a long time. I’ve been helping them along with some things as well, they’re a lot more capable than in the past. It’s hard to explain, it’ll be easier if you see for yourself, so I’m going to set up a meet with them, probably for next week. You can raise any worries with them directly. But they’re convinced, this is their time to move to a new footing. They’ve been biding their time and building up their resources, but I couldn’t hold them back now even if I wanted to. They’ll attempt this operation with us or without us.”

“So they’re suicidal idiots, is what you’re saying.”

( º﹃º ) Signal falters. “Not … not exactly, just … dedicated to their cause. Which is our cause, which is—”

“What kind of nuclear warhead is that?” I gesture at the grainy picture on the skeleton-screen.

“Unknown,” Signal says. “We don’t have access to—”

“Is that the only picture you have?”

“No, we have about half a—”

“Send them to me. All of them. Everything you’ve got.” Another big sigh, a shake of my head. “If you’re going to disable a nuclear bomb, you need to know what kind it is.”

Bright says, “Since when do you know about nuclear bombs, one-arm?”

“Since I have access to the internet. Perhaps you should try it sometime?” Bright squints at my misfired aggression, but I can’t stop, frustration spilling out again. “And one of you — or all of you — is going to have to learn exactly what to do with that warhead. Unless you want to be reduced to atomic dust. I assume magical girls can’t actually survive being nuked?”

Grimgrave laughs. “Could give it a try! But hey hey, Occy, what’d you mean we gotta learn? You can do it, yo, I’m sure you can, you’re clever as all shit and—”

“I won’t fucking be there! Will I?!”

Grimmy blinks, once, twice, three times. “Oh. Oh shit, right, yeah. I mean, like, you could like, tag along?”

Turn away from Grimgrave, hard lump in my throat. I should not have lashed out, not at her, not at Grimmy. Signal irritates me in ways I cannot explain and Bright wants to dismember and roast me, but Grimmy is the closest thing I have to an ally and friend. Why must I keep doing this?

“No, Geegee,” Signal says slowly. “I don’t think that would be wise. Octavia has the right of it. If she can’t transform by then, especially if she can’t fly on her own, then a trip down to England would be incredibly risky. She’s safe here on Luna, as far as we can tell, but … well, it’s … ”

“DC wants their Dreamer’s pet back,” Bright croaks. Then laughs, one low, wet, rubbery ‘huh’.

“Shut your fuckin’ pie-trap, sister-fucker!” Grimmy snaps.

“Make me, chuckles—”

My left fist slams into the table; the pain in my shallow wound is like knives skittering up my forearm. “Don’t,” I hiss. “Not like last time.”

Signal clears her throat, a crackly sound from her speakers, probably to prevent Bright from issuing another challenge. “Octavia, lass,” she says, a little too quick and loud, “I’m sure when you finish repairing your arm, you’ll figure out how to transform. I can help, we can all help. I promise, we’re here for you too. And I’ve just sent you all the pictures we have of the bomb. They should be in your email. Please let me know if you come to any conclusions, I would genuinely appreciate that, it would be a big help.”

“No promises,” I say.

“I would be extremely grateful,” Signal says. Too gentle. Too kind. Wish my coffee mug was still intact so I could throw it at her.

Grimgrave says, “Occy, it’s gonna be fine, yo! Like Siggy said, we can totally figure out your transformation before then! We got three whole months, right? Right? Yeah?” She taps me on the shoulder, but I don’t look up, won’t take the bait to snap in her face again.

“I need to work on my arm,” I mutter.

Humiliating silence settles across the table, broken by my ragged breathing and the hum of 3D printers.

“Sooooo, yo, Siggy, hey,” Grimgrave says. “What are we gonna, like, do with an atomic bomb?” She starts to smile, breaks manic in my peripheral vision, grinning so hard she vibrates. “Cos like—”

“No,” Signal says.

“Awww, come on!” Grimgrave says. “I didn’t even say shit yet!”

“Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no, Geegee. We are not using an atomic bomb for anything. It is going to be disarmed and dismantled, not stolen.”

“But it’s so my kinda thing!” Grimgrave pouts and whines. “Bet you I can fit the whole thing up my skirt!” Signal’s skeleton screen fills with a big red X. Grimgrave rolls her eyes. “At least, like, let me keep a little chunk of it? A piece of casing? A warning sign! Please!”

Signal sighs, gives in. ┗(･ω･;)┛ “If it’s not too impractical. And no radioactive components.”

“Yeeeeeaaaah!” Grimgrave cheers. “Love you, Siggy!”

Signal’s central skeleton-screen switches back to her bullet-pointed agenda. “Now we’ve got that tidied away, we do have other things to cover—”

Grimgrave whines, head rolling back, thumps down in a chair to my left, bare legs splayed wide. Bright semi-subsides, arms over her chest, eyelids heavier than before. Nerys settles back onto her haunches, impossible to tell if she’s listening. Probably she’s not.

Makes two of us.

Anger is trapped in my chest, no outlet and no end. A starving fire locked inside my flesh with nowhere to go, fed from the phantom memory of my own right arm.

Why do I care so much that I cannot participate in this mad scheme?

A week ago I never would have imagined myself as a terrorist, hacking at the rotten roots of England’s diseased tree; only yesterday, or this morning, or at the beginning of this conversation, I rejected the thought of plans for the future, focused entirely on the rebuilding of my right arm. Magical girls standing against the leviathan of the British State? Perhaps I am one of them, but not yet, not in full. And even then, I don’t have what that takes, I am not built that way, I am not capable of such purpose.

But Willow was working with the Trio, or the Trio were ordered to work with Willow.

Dream Control, the Trio, Willow, England, they have all ruined my life, torn away what little scraps I had left. Denied me even the illusion.

So now I want to be there, when the lunar revolutionaries lead the charge. I want to see that mysterious I&O facility cracked open, whatever dream-bound madness leaks out from the broken concrete. I want to sucker-punch England across her jaw, watch her reel and spit blood. I want to bury my knuckles in England’s guts.

When I imagine England made flesh, she wears Willow’s face.

“I’m being serious,” Signal is saying, peevish. “Geegee, I need you to listen. There are important things we all need to know. Geegee. Geegee, stop moaning like that! Don’t you want to know what happened to Nerys? She actually wants to tell us, for once. Oh, that gets your attention, does it? I thought it might.”

Grimgrave quits her whining and sits up, sweeping her hair out of her face, eyes wide in surprise. “Oh shit, what?”

Even Bright blinks a little harder, brings herself into focus. “Nerys?”

Signal yields the floor to Nerys with a tilt of one skeleton-hand. A glance at Signal’s core shows her screens filled with sudden close-ups of Nerys, a dripping, oozing, roiling lake of phantasmal ooze laid over the form of a zoog.

Nerys stays where she is, settled down next to her animal bed in the middle of the table. She raises her black and dripping snout, eyes relaxed and heavy, a subtle smug smile peeling back her lips. Her tail drags across the metal, leaving behind smears of oily black that vanish within seconds.

“You all noticed I got into a fight, yes?” Nerys rasps. She flexes her flanks and back, still covered in wounds scabbing and healing. “I did come back with a few medals, after all.”

Grimmy laughs. “Hard to fuckin’ miss, yeah!”

Nerys smiles wider, black teeth behind black lips. “And a very good fight it was, too!”

A soft chorus of zoogs join in from the domesticated corner, a susurration of rasping and hissing.

“Against who?” Signal asks. “Nerys, I’m as curious as anybody. Octavia, you’re not used to this, but Nerys is never forthcoming with us. She’s never done this before.”

“Yeah,” Grimgrave says. “Nerys doesn’t tell us shit. Come on, who was it?”

Nerys grins, the peeled-snout grin of a satisfied zoog with a belly full of fresh and bleeding meat. “A cat.”

Silence. A hundred zoogs hang on that word. Nerys seems to expect us to gasp or applaud.

“A … cat?” says Grimmy. “Like a … a regular cat?”

Bright sighs. “Moron.”

Nerys raises her snout higher, like a human looking down her nose with superior pride.

“A Dream-God!” she announces. “A fool of a god, stinking of her own urine, faeces caked between her claws, trotting up and down like she’s perfumed and draped in silk. Haaaaaa!” Nerys lets out a raspy zoog-laugh of deep mockery; the other zoogs join in, rattling and chattering. Nerys stops, the zoogs do the same. “Sanctimonious rot-bellied bitch. She bleeds and squeals like anybody else, oh yes she doessssssss-haaaaa!”

“A cat-god?” I ask. “You mean Bast?”

Nerys does a zoog-shrug, a toss of her head.

Signal says, “Bast is just a human name for a concept we can’t express in the waking world. It might be an aspect of Bast, or of some other cat-like Dream-God. Nerys, we need to know, was this cat-god with the Trio? Was she one of theirs?”

“Mmhmm,” Nerys purrs. “One of many who stand behind those reeking bitches.”

“No shit?” Grimgrave says. “Fuck yeah!”

“Huh,” Bright grunts. “Hmm.”

“Octavia,” Signal says, speaking slowly and carefully, “you have to understand, we’ve never been able to figure out which Dream-Gods are aligned with the Trio specifically. There’s hundreds, thousands of them. But Nerys, could you identify her again? Could you give us a name?”

“Names? Mmmmmmmm, no. Names don’t hold their meaning long enough.” Nerys licks her lips, black tongue flowing over her snout. “I’ve got the taste of her blood though. Her scent. Yuck! She and I are at war.” Nerys tilts her snout aside, casting one eye over all of us. “And I could not have done it alone! Not at all. Not without all you girls to distract her dog-sluts.” Funny choice of insult, I think. “Thank you, my girls. You are a delight.”

Grimmy leans forward, half on the table, eyes wide. “Did you win?”

Nerys tilts her snout the other way. “The ambush? Oh yes, yes, yes!” She purrs low, a chuckle in her raspy voice. “She didn’t see me coming. Thinks she’s invincible. Never on the watch for zoogs, you see? The likes of her can’t imagine one of us might bite back.” Nerys snaps her jaws three times, clack-clack-clack.

A chorus of approval goes up from the zoogs in the domesticated corner. Several have climbed the back of the sofa to voice their celebration.

“The ambush,” I echo. “But not the ensuing battle?”

Nerys peels her lips back in a grimace. “Mmmmmm … well … ”

“In other words, you got your arse kicked by a cat. Be honest with us, Nerys. Did you win?”

“Rrrrrr … ” Nerys lets out a sound I’ve never heard from a zoog before, a low growl of frustration.

Answer enough, though it earns me a round of indignation and insults from our zoog audience. Half-hissed cries of ‘cat-bitch-cat-bitch’ and ‘magical fuck girl fuck fuck’.

“What’s the point in celebrating a victory that wasn’t one?” I round on the zoogs, firm but not angry. Half of them up on the sofa tumble down onto the cushions, claws scrabbling at the fabric. Some retreat beneath the furniture, others scatter into the debris of the domesticated corner again. But less than before; I am not so scary now, I am a friend, they know me. And perhaps some of them are smart enough to understand what I mean. “Do you want Nerys to die next time?” I ask. “No? Neither do I. So let’s all admit it, all together. She didn’t win.”

Nerys rasps and grumbles, but does not argue.

Nerys ambushed a cat. A big grey moggy, just like the ones I encountered down in Oxford? The connection seems obvious; what I experienced was likely the spill-over from a Dream-God scuffle.

Nerys perched on a dustbin lid, the clueless cat slinking along beneath her. Nerys launching herself through the air, landing claws-first, two little fistfuls of fur and flesh. A hissing, biting, clawing struggle, yowling and snapping and raking with teeth. Both combatants limping away, spitting blood at each other.

But Nerys is not actually a zoog, however much she and the others might insist; metaphysically and spiritually, perhaps yes, but not physically. She has shown me the truth beneath the extruded visage she presents to the waking world.

She is a goddess as tall as mountains, ankle-deep in rotten meat and filthy water, lonely sovereign of her distant corner of the Dreamlands.

“This wasn’t a back-alley scuffle between a zoog and a cat,” I say out loud. “Everybody understands that, right? That’s just a metaphor. Nerys is talking about a battle in the dream, a battle between gods.”

Nerys says nothing, watches me with unblinking black eyes.

“We see only the reflection,” Signal says softly. “Like I said, Octavia, you catch on quick.”

“Shit,” Grimgrave says. “You’ll get her next time, Nerys.”

“Mmmmmm.”

“Don’t get yourself killed,” I say. “Nerys. Nerys, look at me.” Beady black eyes swivel back to my face. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

Nerys grins slowly. “Ahhhhh. Do you suddenly find yourself caring for a lowly zoog, Octavia?”

“Yes. Next question. Actually, forget that,” I add quickly, “I’m asking the questions right now. Nerys, don’t you have an opinion on all this … this … nuclear bomb stuff? This operation we’re meant to be joining in with?”

Nerys settles her snout, as if readying for a nap. “You girls are free to conduct yourselves in any way you see fit. Didn’t you remember that part, Octavia? I said—”

“I didn’t ask if you were going to order us. I asked for your opinion.”

Nerys pauses for a long moment. “I do not like to think of ancient isles burnt to cinder by arrogance. The bomb should not be there.”

I nod to that, and this time I mean it. If Nerys wants the bomb gone, that matters to me.

Also it would be nice if Grimgrave was not exploded in a nuclear blast.

“Are we done here?” I ask. “I need to get back to work on my arm.”

Bright shifts in her chair, as if suffering intestinal discomfort. “Yeah, right, is that it, Signal?”

A new emote bursts onto the skeleton’s screen: (╯°□°）╯ “What do you think, ladies? Really, look at this.” She flashes up her bullet points again. “Do you think we’re done?”

“Signal,” I say, try not to snap. “I need to work on my arm. Today.”

Signal’s skeleton pauses, then shrugs with both bony arms. “Just for you, Octavia, and just this once. In recognition of your rather unique situation, I will skim the fat.” Most of the bullet points vanish. Two remain, highlighted in bright yellow. “This first one concerns you directly. You’re going to want to hear it. Listen carefully, lass. Please?”

Deep breath. Grit teeth. Clench left fist, nails into my palm, to draw my mind off the ever-present pain in my phantom right.

“Go ahead,” I say.

The skeleton’s central rib-screen displays a new image, a grainy CCTV still of a bland corridor, somewhere inside Oxford Holton Hospital. Three young women are caught in the act of hurrying down the hallway. One, petite and mouse-like, scurries behind the other two, shoulders drawn forward as if she fears attack from the rear. The second is dark-skinned, hair braided, dressed in a suit. The third strides ahead, clearly in the lead, wearing a long skirt and lace blouse, long blonde hair swaying out behind.

“Unfortunately this is the best frame I could secure,” Signal says. “I ripped it when we were on-site, during the fight. Even I am forced to admit that physical proximity does have occasional uses.”

The faces of the first two women are obscured, the mousy one by the position of her head, and the one in the suit by the camera angle. But the woman in the lead, her features pinched and sharp, a bruise on her mouth, catches my attention even through the low resolution.

A fishhook snags in the back of my brain. A pinprick of pressure mounts. The fishhook slips free, bait stolen by incomplete memory.

“Those are the three girls I saw outside Willow’s hospital room,” I say. “Right?”

“Oh yeah, shit!” Grimgrave lights up. “Those bitches! Who the hell were they? Dream Control flunkies or some shit?”

Signal says nothing for a moment, then: “Bright, if you would do us the honour of confirming my suspicion?”

Bright is staring at the image on the screen. Eyes soft, breathing slow.

“Bright?” Signal prompts. “Bright? Please?” A long pause. “Bethany?”

Bright swallows hard, sucks down a bolus of wet mucus. “Uh huh. That’s her.”

“Thank you, Beth,” Signal says. “That confirms it. The three women Octavia and Geegee ran into at the hospital were the Trio of Albion.”

Pinprick of pressure in my head again. Blink and it’s gone.

“What?” I say, almost want to laugh. “Sorry, no, that doesn’t make any sense, they couldn’t be, they didn’t look … look anything like … ” Pressure comes a third time, enough to make my eyes water. Left hand to my forehead, trying to massage my sinuses.

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiit,” Grimgrave whispers. “You think?! Like, for real?”

“Bright’s recognition of her sister all but confirms it,” says Signal. “That woman is Scarlet Edge, untransformed, in civilian guise, whatever we wish to label it. The other two we can’t be sure about, but it’s likely.”

Blink blink, blink away the haze of dreams. The woman in the grainy CCTV image doesn’t look anything like Scarlet Edge.

Or does she?

Same facial structure perhaps, pure coincidence. Same pinched, tight, sharpened features; maybe I’m just imagining that. Even the same bruise on her mouth, around the same petulant lips, the echo of my teeth, my kiss.

But it can’t be her.

It’s not her.

It is not.

No.

Grimgrave suffers the same incredulity, a sceptically wrinkled nose. “Nah.” She hesitates. “I mean … yeah, nah. Or … yeah? Shit, it does look like her. Like, a bit. Weird!”

“It’s uncanny,” I murmur. “But it’s not her.”

“Right … yeah, Occy, yeah, right. You’re right.”

“Ahem,” Signal says out loud. “What you’re experiencing right now is the same psychological censor as any fully waking homo sapiens, though slightly cushioned. If we weren’t all magical girls, we would have totally dismissed this picture by now. Being in a Dreamland overlap may be helping as well, though I’m not sure. Intellectually you might be able to draw the connection between this woman and Scarlet Edge, but emotionally your mind refuses to accept it. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault, you can’t help that. Bright, on the other hand, has seen Scarlet Edge transform with her own eyes. If she says this is Scarlet, then she’s right. She’s the only one of us here who has witnessed that up close. Octavia, Geegee, neither of you have that advantage, not yet.”

Can’t help myself, I scoff. “And what about you, Signal? Are you immune to this?”

“Oh, far from it, lass.” She laughs, a soft and gentle bubble. “I’ve been poring over this image, measuring this woman’s face, the heights of the other two, all of it, trying to get it into my skull. But it just won’t stick. I barely even believe what I’m saying, I can only do it because I’m behind all these skeletons. Distance helps. I’ve got written notes, and I know I can trust those, though it still seems absurd.”

“Weird,” Grimgrave repeats. “Weird, weird, weird. Shit, I don’t like this. Shit.”

“Bright,” I say. She pulls her eyes away from the picture with some difficulty. “That’s truly your sister? You’re not playing some kind of prank?”

“What do you think?” she croaks. “You’re the one who gave her that bruise.”

No matter how hard I stare at those bruised lips, I can’t make the connection. Cannot make myself believe. Truth is lost beyond the wall of sleep, even for a magical girl.

But I’ve had plentiful experience with the necessity of belief in a truth one does not feel. The only thing for which I will ever thank Willow.

“Assuming that is the Trio,” I say, “why were they there?”

“I’m glad you asked,” says Signal. “Because that is the six hundred million pound question.”

Grimgrave snorts. “‘Cos we was there, duh?”

“They were outside that hospital room before we arrived,” I say. “They were there because Willow was there, because she was calling to me. When we turned up, they let her … they … ” Hard swallow. Dry throat. “They let her have me. They fed me to her.”

Grimgrave pulls a thinking face. “Shit, right! But hey, Occy, that blonde bitch, right there? Scarlet or not, she really didn’t want you to stay in that room alone, yo. They were all torn up about it and shit, but she’s the only one who fought.”

“Pardon?”

“Remember?” Grimmy strikes a pose, raises a fist, yanks an imaginary handful of somebody else’s hair. “She like, went for me! Said how could I, we should all be in there, all sorts of crazy shit! She lost it, yo!”

Amid Willow and the rooftop fight and all the rest, I had forgotten. Grimgrave and that woman had been locked in a struggle, just the other side of the door.

Scarlet Edge fought. For me?

“That makes no sense,” I murmur. “I don’t understand.”

Bright stares at me with dull and overt hate, slow as a forest fire.

“What?” I demand. “What?! I didn’t ask for this, Bright! I didn’t ask for your sister’s attention! We’ve been over this.”

Bright sniffs hard, swallows a plug of mucus. Her jaw tightens, eyes narrow.

I am not ready for this, not prepared and armed for a rematch with Burning Bright. My left hand creeps into the pocket of my robe, feels for Grimmy’s borrowed handgun, getting smears of blood everywhere. Will bullets slow down a dragon? Signal and Grimgrave are right here, surely they can keep her off me.

Signal’s skeleton-speakers emit a sharp bark of static, probably meant to be yet another clearing of her throat. Grimmy jerks. I flinch. Bright blinks.

“The important takeaway from this discovery,” Signal says, her voice pitched slightly too loud, “is that there may be trouble in paradise. The Trio are working with at least one Lucid Dreamer that we know of — Willow Finch — and I don’t think they like that very much. They were given orders they did not necessarily agree with. Remember what Azure was saying on the hospital rooftop? They may have internal fault lines we are not fully aware of. They may have doubts. They may be vulnerable to argument.”

“What?!” Grimgrave laughs. “You’re fucking kidding?! You think we can like, what, flip the fuckin’ Trio?!”

“I didn’t say that—”

“Scarlet’ll never bend,” Bright grunts. “She’ll break, for me, given time. But she won’t bend. No way, no how.” Bright turns her eyes on me.

“I am inclined to agree with Bright,” I say, staring right back. “Whatever doubts Scarlet Edge might have, she’s … ” A murderous fascist? An obsessive sadist? A parody of a woman, dressed in crimson finery, with all of England trying to look up her skirt? Her fall would burn like Lucifer tumbling from heaven. My mouth goes dry. Oh, to bring her low with my fist in her gut. “Focused. She’s too focused.”

“You don’t know her, you crippled whore,” Bright growls.

“I am trying to agree with you,” I snap, “you mentally sub-normal chimpanzee! Agreement, yes?! Can you understand that? Do you comprehend?”

Bright snorts, turns her face away.

Deep breath, cram that pointless rage back down. Grimgrave grins like I just scored a point, which doesn’t help; I am not proud of that insult.

“Anyway,” I say. “Yes. Scarlet isn’t vulnerable, not in that way. Azure, maybe, based on what she was saying. Dawn, I don’t … I don’t know. She was the coldest of the three.”

Dawn scared me, but I don’t say that out loud.

“Well put, Octavia,” Signal says. “That was basically my assessment too. Dawn is the least likely to be open to communication. Scarlet may be too dedicated to the cause, which we already knew, mostly through Bright. But Azure seemed perturbed, shall we say? Yes, I think we shall. My point is, if any of us have a chance to communicate with the Trio, especially if one of them is alone, we should take it. Especially Azure.”

Grimgrave laughs. “What, even me?”

“Even you, Geegee.”

“What?” Another laugh. “I mean, yeah, but like—”

“I’m serious. Any of us, or all of us, we need to make our case to them. I’m not saying we’re likely to turn one of the Trio of Albion, we need not get our hopes up in that regard. But if we can plant doubts, if we can exploit pre-existing fault lines, that is going to make them vulnerable. And we do need them vulnerable. This goes for any other magical girls too, anybody who we can communicate with.”

“But perhaps not me,” I say.

Stand up, out of my seat, before Signal can muster her inevitably reasonable rebuke.

“Octavia? You’re one of us too, you—”

“I still can’t transform. I don’t think I’m going to be speaking to any magical girls anytime soon, other than the ones at this table.” A pointed look for Bright. “And I certainly shouldn’t be the one speaking to Scarlet Edge. Correct?”

Bright holds my gaze. Blinks once. Nods, barely an inch. “Mm.”

At last, I’ve made myself clear. “What’s the other remaining item on your agenda, Signal? Is it important? Because I need to get back to repairing my arm, if I’m ever to be of any use.”

Signal shows us a new emote: (⋟﹏⋞)

“Logistics!” she says with a sharp sigh. “I want to go over the first iteration of the plan for the raid on Facility Seventeen. Our role, how we will support the Opposition, how to deal with extracting the Dreamers.”

“Right. Well. Enjoy that. I’m going to work on my arm.”

“Octavia, lass—”

I stomp away from the table, cradling my phantom right arm across my belly, holding my wounded left palm at an awkward angle, trying not to grit my teeth. Frustration pours into the phantom limb, ghost-locked muscles crying with tension, fingernails gouging pits in the palm, knuckles turned to knots of rusted steel. Stomp goes my new prosthetic foot, the only note of satisfaction in the cacophony of irritation and shame as I drag my patchwork carcass back to the only work that matters.

Sit down at my laptop, ignore Signal’s attempts to call me back, pull up the CAD files, the ones still printing and the ones that need to be started.

Useless cripple. Coddled and cradled. Left behind on the moon.

Signal gives up shortly. She and Bright start to talk logistics and strategy, or rather Signal does most of the talking while Bright occasionally grunts. Grimgrave rapidly loses interest, gets up and ventures toward me. A sharp look keeps her at bay, though she laughs and shrugs, goes to play around with Nerys instead. Zoogs venture out from within the domesticated corner, a few peering at me. I ignore them too.

Logistics, strategy, tactics. Disarming a nuclear weapon. Breaking out dream-bound prisoners. Seeking to educate enemy magical girls.

For all her cameras and computers, Signal is surprisingly naive.

Once more to my feet, out of my chair, and stomping back over to the big metal table.

“—and if there’s anything in the deeper floors of this facility,” Signal is saying to Bright, who seems to be barely listening, “we’ll need to take the lead. None of the Opposition agents have gotten down there, and we don’t know … ” She trails off as I approach. “Octavia? Would you like to rejoin us?”

Plant my feet. Left hand on my hip. Never mind about the blood.

“Why address ourselves to individual magical girls when we haven’t addressed anybody else?”

Grimgrave looks up from Nerys. Bright looks round in her chair. Signal shifts her emote: (=ↀωↀ=) “Oh?” she says. “What’s this now, lass?”

“I understand why Grimmy or Bright might not have thought of this—” Pause. Bite my tongue. Curse myself. “No offence, Grimmy. But … but you, Signal. Why have you not considered this?”

“Considered what, lass?” she purrs.

“An address to the nation! To England! To the whole United Kingdom!” I gesture, or try to, with my right arm, rewarded with a fresh crackle of pain in my stump, up the side of my neck, deep into my chest. Grunt, hiss, but keep going. “Yes, there’s a video of us fighting the Trio now, all over the internet, but that hardly puts our case to the public. What even is our case? Can anybody articulate it? Anybody?”

Grimmy throws a fist in the air. “Fuck Dream Control! Fuck ‘em dead!”

I point at her. “Yes. Yes, but why? And how? We have to put that to the public. To everybody. We should make a video, transformed, or … or maybe not transformed. An address to the nation. To the world?”

Why do I care so much? Why does this re-light the fire in my belly, burn up the toxic byproduct of all the rage locked away in my phantom limb? I straighten my spine, raise my head, forget the pain for a moment.

“The Opposition have prepared exactly such an address,” says Signal, “in video and print, for dissemination after their planned raid on Facility Seventeen.”

“Oh, fuck that!” I snap. “I don’t know who the Opposition are! I don’t know what they want. What’s their vision for what comes next? What are their priorities?” A pause, heavy in my chest. “I don’t even know who we are, either. We don’t even have a name.”

“Whoever we fuckin’ wanna be!” Grimmy cheers.

“Octavia, lass,” Signal says, “I’m glad you’re enthusiastic about this, I really am, it’s great to see. But the Opposition is much more experienced at this than any of us are. None of us are political operators, none of us knows how to speak to the public, none of us wants to be on camera. Who’s going to make this video? I don’t like to be front and centre. Bright … well, not to speak for Bright, but—”

“No interest,” Bright grunts.

“Well, there you have it. And Geegee, I adore you, but you’re not going to be very convincing on camera. You see, Octavia? That’s not our role, not what the Opposition needs from us.”

“Fuck the Opposition,” I say. “How about what I need?”

“Octavia—”

“Forget it.”

And forget it I do, because am I really fit to address the whole nation? Could I endure the slings and arrows of public mockery, all for the sake of those few who understand, the hidden and the harried, and worried and the hunted, the young women like me, the pawns of Dreamers, those lost in the dark?

Push that thought away. Get back to work.

~~~~~~~

Seven hours later, after a slog of afternoon, a thin trickle of evening, and a two-hour semi-planned nap, I’m almost ready to begin the final process of resurrecting my prosthetic arm.

The rest of the day is a depressing wash. Signal’s meeting dribbles off into a list of logistical questions and answers ignored by a half-awake Bright. Signal takes the time to ask me about Winter, but what little I know is less than she hoped; Winter is an enigma, far beyond the fuzzy borders of the Opposition. Bright eats her fill, vanishes to her bedroom, emerges again at dinner time to pick up a bowl of stew and trudge back into her sullen privacy. Signal remains in the Big Room for most of the afternoon and evening, her ‘core’ sitting at her desk, typing away on her computer, the skeletons standing guard or playing with the zoogs. She seems to withdraw into herself after asking me about Winter, her screens full of code and command-line interfaces, pictures of that bloody island in Scotland, endless news-feeds from England and beyond, pictures and videos of magical girls, snippets of fanart, talking heads on mute, message windows briefly in view, then banished again, for her eyes only. She retreats after dinner, off to her bedroom with all her skeletons.

Grimgrave hangs on the whole way, her behaviour the same as ever. She eats dinner nearby, pesters me with questions about the final stages of fixing my arm, but I don’t chase her off.

How could I? She has the right.

My afternoon is all printing, planning, swapping pieces in and out of the annealing ovens. Listing, checking, double-checking. Sanding down edges by hand, fitting parts together by eye. Making sure the battery is charged, cleaning the socket for my stump, getting the wires in place before the outer case is complete. I spend almost two whole hours taking apart the thumb and middle finger of my prosthetic right hand, to fix their alignment. My left hand fixes itself; over the afternoon the shallow cut from my tantrum with the mug closes itself up, drawing on my meagre reserves of ‘girl juice’.

Doesn’t help with the blood I’ve smeared all over my robe. Can’t be bothered to get changed.

By nine in the evening I’m exhausted, but not done yet. The final few pieces of myself are still annealing. A nap on one of the sofas beckons, surrounded by zoogs, serenaded by the quad-television down low, playing an anime about card games.

“Sleep if you gotta, Occy!” Grimgrave tells me, with a grin and a shrug. “I’m right here, yeah? So’s like, everybody else!” She gestures at the zoogs, already settling with evening torpor, many snuggling down for sleep together, little eyes drifting shut.

Sleep sneaks over me, upright on a sofa.

Waking finds me slid sideways, slumped over the sofa’s arm, a blanket draped across my shoulders, hair stuck to my face, drool on my cheek.

Lights in the Big Room are down low; first time I’ve seen that, didn’t know it was possible.

Raindrops drum on the roof of Plato Base, heavy and deep.

Grimmy lies fast asleep on the next sofa over, curled up with her knees to her chest, head on a pile of cushions, half a dozen zoogs snuggled against her front, others dozing nearby. I stumble to my feet, wipe my face on my left sleeve. Nobody around, nobody but me and Grimmy. No skeletons, no Nerys — no, correction, Nerys is snuggled down in her special solo animal bed, now moved to the middle of the domesticated corner, but very much asleep.

Grimgrave’s sleeping face is full of peace. Lips squished out of shape by the cushions. Hair falling across her eyes. No hint of the screeching maniac pixie from her waking hours. All bundled up beneath a blanket, many lucky zoogs cuddled up so close, getting to share her heat and warmth, her softness, the feel of her slender chest rising and falling.

Before I know what I’m doing, my hand is on her forehead. My fingers stroke her hair back, keep it from her eyes. She shifts, stirs, does not wake.

I recoil, slowly. Bite my lip, scream stuck in my throat.

What am I doing? While she’s asleep? When she stayed here, stayed vulnerable, stayed out in the open, stayed for me?

Turn away. Look away; look away! A stiff walk back to my desk, back to my work, smothered by the sound of the rain on the roof. Past my desk, into the domesticated corner, toward the fridge at the periphery. Have to drown this feeling, have to smother it and end it and make it stop, or else I will be no better than Willow.

Perhaps Grimgrave forgot a bottle of something in the fridge, or maybe she trusts me now, thinks I’m safe, and she put her vodka back where it belongs, where I can find it, where I can use it to kill a part of me I don’t want.

Really, this is for her safety and mine, better for us both. There is nothing wrong with this relapse, it’s only because otherwise I would—

Gregory the dead Moon Beast eyes me from inside his tank of cloudy water. I stop, three paces from the fridge.

“Fuck,” I hiss, shamed. “Fuck, alright. Sorry. Sorry!”

Eye contact with Gregory is not easy, through the fluid of his tank and the slackness of dead muscles and the nest of tentacles for a face. But I nod to him, trying not to shake.

Gregory recedes; I pull away from the fridge. Not as if there’s any alcohol in there anyway.

Back to work. I shuffle over to the ovens, check all the final pieces have finished annealing, then carry everything to the table. A nice big clear space, the pieces of my arm laid out, ready to be assembled. Everything is measured and checked and double-checked once again. The process of assembly may take some time, I’m not quite sure, never done it from scratch before. I shift my laptop aside, then reach over and open the internet browser, turn the volume down to a whisper, tune into a stream, something to occupy my ears while I work. Irony brings me to the Twitch category for magical girl livestreams. A Polish magical girl called ‘Cloud Rime’ is streaming herself halfway up a mountain for some reason, though without subtitles or live translation. An American magical girl by the name of ‘Paradox Kisser’ is streaming herself hunting a stray Volans polypus somewhere over the American West.

Even beyond England, some things never change. I switch categories, to video games. Find somebody playing Factory-Oh. On a final whim I check my magibooru uploads again, a lazy tap of the F5 key.

A comment.

Upright in my seat, heart in my mouth.

4en4 – Scarlet Edge herself? — has left a comment on one of my reuploads. One hour and twenty six minutes ago. I read and reread the comment a dozen times in ten seconds.

The comment is an alphanumeric string, nothing else: k6v63rlw5n4m

I copy it, save it to a text file. Wet my lips, straighten my spine, my brain already chewing on the meaning. A cipher? A code? Something else? Random noise to throw me off the trail?

“Wrong person to tease with a challenge, Scarlet,” I whisper. “This is nothing.”

Half an hour and several dozen tests later, I determine what the string means: it’s a username formatted for an encrypted messaging application called ‘Undernote’. I waste a few precious minutes looking up Undernote and verifying it’s neither an intelligence agency honeypot nor open-secretly owned by some hollow-brained tech billionaire. Legitimate encryption, open-source, dev team in France.

Sixty seconds later Undernote is installed on my laptop, running in a container. The UI is exactly what I expect from a bunch of secrecy-obsessed old Linux grognards, nothing but greenish text on a black background, a blinking cursor, and a warning that all messages will be automatically erased upon exit. Bless those open-source oldheads. Without them, England would be even more tightly bound.

I make an account, generate my own alphanumeric string, ajjrpx34l3qv. Log in, set my visible username as OC. Send a contact request to k6v63rlw5n4m.

Seconds tick by. Green cursor blinks on black. Try to breathe. The comment was two hours ago. Down in England it’s almost midnight. Scarlet Edge is the pinnacle of a good girl, at least out on her pristine red-white surface, probably tucked up in bed hours ago. Probably not even her. Probably just driving myself crazy and risking another heart attack.

Request accepted. My contact list populates with a single new entry: ‘SE’

“No way,” I whisper, voice a broken quiver. “No, it has to be a trick. This can’t be you.”

I open a new message window with SE. Can barely type. Hit enter.

OC: I saw your comment.

Undernote is old school. No ‘so-and-so is typing’. Just a green indicator to show ‘SE’ is online. Minutes tick by in rain-shrouded silence, heart thudding in my chest, palm sweaty, throat dry. Maybe she’s lost her nerve. I glance up at Grimgrave, confirm she is fast asleep. Maybe it’s a ruse, Dream Control trying to trace me into the Lunar void. Maybe it was never Scarlet Edge at all.

A soft audio ping. A reply on my screen.

SE: Prove it’s you.

“Huh. Okay. Okay, if this was a trick, that would be my opening move too. It can’t be you. It’s not.”

But I want to believe.

OC: Why?

SE: I’ve had three fakes so far. You might be another. Prove it’s you.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

You know, Octavia, this (obsession) preoccupation with Scarlet Edge is really getting to be a bit risky. Shouldn’t you be focusing on safer things, like nuclear weapons? Or the (terrorist) freedom fighter group you’re about to help break into a government facility? No? Okay then. Don’t get your eyebrows burned off, if you know what I mean.

And we’re back! Thank you everybody for your patience during an extra unplanned break week; my publishing schedule should be back to normal now, for the foreseeable future. Arc 4 is almost over, the next chapter is the last! And then we’re onto arc 5, ehehehe. Ahem. I am looking forward to this.

Also! This week, I have some fanart to share, from over on the discord server! Hearts Aflame (by Cera!) is a very fiery rendition of Scarlet Edge, with a very interesting variation on her magical girl outfit. I have also updated the memes page with a dozen or so new additions, some of which are … well, you’ll see, if you find that kind of thing amusing!

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

Subscribe on Patreon!

Right now my patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

Also, thank you, dear readers! Thank you so much for being here and reading my little story about unhinged magical girls; we’ve still only scratched the surface of what I have planned, and I’m really happy that so many people are enjoying Maidens of the Fall so far.

Next chapter, it’s time for a clandestine chat with the ‘enemy’.