It was only after meeting Loybol that day that it began to bother me that Prochazka never did anything on his own. Maybe he considered himself too old for that kind of work—but all the stories I’d heard suggested that he loved that stuff; he loved the risk and rush, he loved the quiet creeping and the bursts of life-or-death action. All the stories made me believe that he didn’t find life complete without it.

Why else would he have gone back to war so many times—over and over again, for armies that disrespected him?

But Loybol was different. She had more agents than us by far. A literal army of slaves, a unit comprised solely of telepaths. Our entire facility numbered about eighty—she had ten times that working for her. And yet, here she was—the real Loybol, in the flesh. The one herself, doing her own work. Not a helper—Loybol. Not an assistant. Not a prized agent.

I wished Prochazka would do that for us. Age wasn’t an excuse for keys. He was over a hundred, or at least right around it, but he didn’t look a day over thirty-five, and even that was abnormally old-looking for a key-user. Maybe Loybol was significantly younger. I didn’t know. There was no way to tell, and I assumed that after a certain time, age stopped mattering for keys. Once you’ve hit the point where you don’t age anymore, does it matter at all that one key is fifty years older than another if you both look twenty-seven?

And, either way, she didn’t exactly seem chipper.

I spent longer thinking about that than I’m fully willing to admit. It occupied my thoughts all the way back down to the prisoner’s cell and then some.

Bell had the foresight to memorize the code for the basement when Randy plugged it in. In hindsight, it was so glaringly obvious that I should have done that too that it stung a little. Despite how far I’d come, I still had so far to go.

We came up to the door, which was locked by another code. None of us had it.

Bell looked at me. Loybol simply stretched her hand down, and a chunk of concrete roughly the size of her head leapt up into her hand.

“Cover your ears,” she said.

We did.

Loybol took the chunk, swung her arm back, and threw it so hard that it knocked the door clean off its hinges with a scream of tortured metal that no amount of ear-blocking could really save us from.

I guess that answered the question of what her key was.

In the room was an extremely startled man, no key around his neck, who was bound to a chair and gagged. I didn’t get much of a chance to look at him, though, and even if I did, I knew that the man didn’t matter.

Loybol wasted no time in walking right up to the man, black liquid dripping from her fingertips.

I could do nothing but watch. She was some kind of alien, certainly. No human could withstand an infection from those. No human could do what she was doing.

And yet—there she was.

I was in awe, or I was terrified, or I was both. I couldn’t sort feeling from desire. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to be Loybol, or if I wanted to be with Loybol. Maybe she was stronger than Prochazka. She certainly seemed invincible enough.

One thing I can say for myself: since coming to the Radiant, I had never lacked for prospective role models.

I didn’t get the sense from Loybol that she enjoyed this, like I did from Bell. Loybol did not smile when she moved towards that man. He knew what was coming—he must have recognized her. Bell would have taken some kind of pleasure in it, knowing that the man was terrified of her and that she had him completely in the palms of her hands, at her mercy—but Loybol didn’t.

She had an objective. She completed the objective.

Nothing more, nothing less.

But—

Both of them moved through their motions with a clear, crisp certainty that made me feel guilty for even thinking that something they were doing wasn’t objectively the right thing to do. They were born for this. There was nothing else in the world they could do but this.

They were who I wanted to be; except that I was myself.

Loybol put two fingers on the man’s forehead, and the liquid drained from her—tracing angled lines right down to his tear ducts; some going down his mouth, some going around to his ears.

It did not look painless. He thrashed in the chair and his eyes rolled back—concrete rising up to brace his legs so he couldn’t knock himself over.

And as the liquid flowed into him, Loybol did not move. She did not react. The man screamed against the gag, a tortured, muffled animal death-cry, and slowly that cry lowered to a whimper, and them fell silent.

We all stood there for a moment, just existing.

Then Loybol spoke: “There’s a sweet spot to this,” she said. “Where some people are too weak to take it, and some are too strong to be taken.”

Her regular talking voice was so quiet. I couldn’t imagine her ever raising her voice—and I decided that I didn’t want to be anywhere near the situation that she would have to in.

Bell said, “I guess he wasn’t one of yours, then.”

“None of them were,” Loybol replied, without looking away from the man. “I got here an hour before you did, I think. Thomas wouldn’t have been able to detect me, and I’m fairly certain Wyatt was out of his range, so he couldn’t have known he was dead, either.”

The man’s eyes had fully rolled back into his skull—further than I figured eyes should be able to go. Loybol went on: “Hopefully he doesn’t end up too subservient. I don’t get a whole lot of control over how much they grovel.”

“Grovel?”

“Some of the people I have only refer to me by a title,” Loybol said. “Sometimes they bow when I walk by. I’ve been called a goddess before. It’s—fine, I suppose, if you’re into that kind of thing, but it’s always just made me uncomfortable.”

Bell just looked impressed more than anything else. “How about that.”

“Trust me, it’s not as fun as it sounds.”

“I bet,” Bell said, and convinced no one. Seeing that her agreement fell on deaf ears, she quickly changed the subject. “How long before we can talk to him?”

“A minute or so,” Loybol said. “I’m not feeling much resistance. Should be quick.”

I just watched. I couldn’t do much else. All of this was beyond me.

I was a queen among goddesses.

Loybol looked a little paler than before; a bit emaciated. I guess assimilating someone with the black liquid was a bit like donating blood. A physical part of her was gone.

After a minute or so, the man’s eyes opened. He looked up, and Loybol untied his gag.

He took stock of the assembled, and then lowered his eyes. “Miss Loybol,” he said, low. I imagined it accompanied by a bow; that is, if he wasn’t still tied to a chair.

“Eye contact is fine,” Loybol replied.

He looked up at her. She shrugged, glancing back at us. “Well, I guess this isn’t as awkward as it could be.”

Then she turned her attention back to the man. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Thomas Petri,” he replied. His voice was perfectly even, and oddly hollow—he knew what he was saying, but I’m not sure he’d know who “Thomas Petri” was if you asked him.

Loybol raised her eyebrows at the sound of it. “Any relation to Julius?”

“No.”

“Shame,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

Loybol held one finger up to delay Petri’s response, and she said to us: “Watch this. Guys like Petri here have a tendency to have dead-men's locks on vital pieces of information, which keeps it from other telepaths if they get overpowered. For me, though...”

Loybol’s one finger turned to a beckon. Instantly, Petri replied: “White Plains.”

Bell frowned. “That’s not one of ours.”

“It’s not,” Loybol agreed. She then asked: “Is Wyatt alive or dead?”

“Alive,” Petri said, “Far as I know. I can’t feel him from here.”

“Well, I’ve got bad news for you,” Loybol said.

Petri sucked in his lips, looked down at his lap. “Mmm.”

“You had no idea I was here, did you?”

“Nope.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it?” Petri asked. He relaxed back a bit. “I mean—feel like I should be able to do that, y’know?”

“He’s two floors up through a bunch of concrete,” Loybol said. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

Petri tried to shrug, and then realized he was still tied to a chair. “I actually, honestly forgot that I was tied to a chair,” he said. “God, this is weird.”

“You’re aware of what’s happened to you,” Loybol said, slowly. Suddenly defensive again.

“I mean, I’ve been freed,” Petri said. “I’d feel a bit more liberated if I wasn’t tied up, but...”

He tried to shrug again. “Dammit.”

“Are you just groveling, or did I actually free you from something?” Loybol asked. Back to business.

Petri blinked. The question went in one ear and out the other. “Um—I...think I’m just groveling?”

“You weren’t under anyone’s control before.”

“No,” Petri said. “Man, I—I feel like I should be panicking, or really upset or something, or maybe I should be in pain, but I’m just...not? Like...I know I’m not supposed to feel like this, but I do, and for some reason I’m okay with it?”

“Do me a favor,” Loybol said.

“Anything,” Petri said, instantly. “God, that’s…um, that came out fast.”

“Can you expel any of the Umbroids from yourself?” Loybol asked.

“That’s what you call them?” Bell snickered.

“Whoa whoa whoa—when the fuck did they get here?” Petri motioned at us with his head, as best he could while tied up. “Have they been here the whole time? How did I not notice two other people in here? Is—fuck, is that a kid? You have a daughter?”

“No,” Loybol said, a touch too fast for it to be natural. “I definitely do not have any kids. They’ve been here the whole time.”

“God,” Petri said, lost. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“This is so weird,” he repeated.

“You’ll get used to it,” Loybol replied. “Although, you being mostly all there is actually really good for me.”

“Is it?” Petri said back, the hollowness persisting in his voice. “That’s good.”

It didn’t sound like he thought that was good.

“It means you’ll have a snowball’s chance in hell at blending in when you go home.”

“I’m not coming back with you?”

“No,” Loybol said. “In all likelihood, you’ll never see me again, unless something very strange happens. Just to double-check something—Erika…no, wait. Bell, can you think of a word for a second?”

Bell nodded. “Got it.”

For what felt like the billionth time that night, I flushed red. Loybol made the right call, but that call was based on assumed weakness. True assumed weakness, but I was supposed to make that judgement myself. When someone else did it for me, it hurt so much more.

But it wasn’t the time to bring that up, so I clenched my jaw, let the heat spread over my cheeks and did nothing.

“Bread,” Petri said. “Man, I’m hungry, too. I wasn’t hungry when I—wait, was I? I—I don’t remember.”

“You probably were,” Loybol said. “I doubt they were feeding you all that much.”

“Given that I’m tied up, probably not. Unless they were spoon-feeding me.”

"Well, it seems like your key's fine. Here's the deal: is someone from your organization coming to pick you up?"

Petri nodded. "Yeah. Uh—four guys in a pick-up truck. An old Tundra, I think. Silver. Don't know the year."

"That's plenty," Loybol replied. "Which direction?"

"They're coming down from the north," Petri said. “Nobody all that strong, I think.”

“Any telepaths?”

“Nah,” Petri said. “It was a tall order to get myself out here for this, let alone get another one to send for the pickup. We’re, uh, kind of valuable. Don’t you have, like, eight or ten telepaths just lying around?”

Loybol grimaced. “That’s the rumor, huh.”

“Sure is.”

“I have enough,” Loybol said. “The exact number I need and no more.”

“What number is that?”

Loybol raised her eyebrows. “More than one and less than a thousand. When is the truck getting here?”

Petri shrugged. “I sort of thought they’d be here already. Maybe they got held up.”

Loybol frowned, glanced at me. “Erika, you go out there. Bell will meet you in a bit, and I’ll follow with Petri a bit after that.”

She technically didn’t get to order us around—we didn’t answer to her—but both of us just nodded, instinctively.

I turned for the steps right away.