Julia Montoya Vargas - American Legionnaires HQ - The Forbidden Dome

Another night spent in the office. Stacks of paper sprawled across the table. My computer worked non-stop as if possessed by the ghost of a damned workaholic. Getting older doing meaningless tasks was not what I imagined for my life. Not worth the wrinkles on my face either.

Being in the epicenter of America, scratch that, the epicenter of the world just to cover O’Brien’s tracks was not what I dreamed of. Ever since I threw Timothy’s out of his filthy pick up truck with my own power, I knew I was meant for something more. More than waiting tables on a cheap dinner in the southwest of fucking nowhere. Living and dying like a cockroach, barely surviving. But on that fateful day everything changed. I became powered. I was not a little girl craving approval, craving shelter. I became somebody, but now I’m not needed anymore.

Not even a decade ago, I was a frightening woman. My name rang loud and clear in every drug den, crime syndicate, or cartel operation in New York City. Cutting through a team of villains like it was nothing. Seeing everybody pissing their pants because they knew who I was. They knew that you didn’t fuck with Arsenal. Ever. Today though? Shagging my twenty year old lazy intern and filing last minute requests was all that I was good for. It would be comical if it wasn’t… If it wasn’t shit. That's what it was. A steaming pile of shit.

Opening Connor’s cabinet, I took a bottle of expensive brandy, reminding myself to wipe off the request for said bottle. I filled my plastic cup to the brim. Fortunately for me, there were perks for playing the secretary for as long as I have been. Fucking secretary? Yeah right. What really hurt is not that old fuck thought I was a secretary, he was so sure of it that he didn’t even ask. Liaison? I snorted.

How did I turn into nothing? Nobody needed us since Vorenus and his Legionnaires came into the big city, defeating villains like they owned the place. They pacified New York so thoroughly that nobody dared to ask if they were truly the good guys.

Looking at all the data in front of me, I couldn’t help but ask why. Every sheet of paper, each and every number pointed in a single terrifying direction. We were not needed. From the fifth tiered Vanps till the trailblazers on the second, we were not needed. This game was completely rigged. If you were not a prime you were the help.

I laughed, the bitterness in my voice echoing through an empty hallway where night and day intermingled. The absence of windows in the hollow mountain was something I could never get used to.

A hundred other offices were set up in this place. Every single one of them unseen. Classified missions were the only thing people dealt with here and yet nobody asked any questions. Not the most simple of them all. If there was no threat to New York in almost a decade, what the hell were all these people doing?

Tina knocked on the door. Her brown eyes indifferent about everything around her. I wonder if she was always this way or if it was O’Brien that took her will to live one punch at a time.

“I cleaned everything up,” she said. Her voice even, emotionless. She popped another pill into her mouth. Third one today. Go ahead princess, you can try to numb this feeling as much as you want to. No amount of pills is gonna make it go away.

“Incinerated or...”

“We threw her in the sea. That kind of stuff leaves all kinds of-”

“I changed my mind. I don’t wanna know.” Plausible deniability was the name of the game. Not enough to avoid jail, but perhaps enough to avoid a summary execution by the State.

“I don’t know what the big deal is, singers die all the time. Can we just move on? There was almost a hundred kilos of the stuff right there. There’ll be fiends in my case all week,” she sighed. Her pretty sociopathic ass completely clueless.

And now I am an accomplice. Fuck it, it’s not like I didn’t know what was going on. “She wasn’t a bimbo singing in a strip club, Tina. She was somebody. You’re too young to give a shit, but a lot of important people do. I doubt even Connor could walk away from something like this. But us? We are fucked. We are the kind of people that you can make an example of without any repercussions. If things go south we are the scapegoats, do you understand?

The gears in her head started turning, slowly forming the picture that any sane person would have figured it out a long time ago. She gulped. “Yeah, I don’t think Connor would help us.”

My smirk was the only answer she got.

“Anything else, darling?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. To her credit, she knew when she was not wanted anymore.

“No, ma’am.” Fucking Grandpa. It took a gentleman to insult you with politeness. Of all the things she could’ve learned. I should never have mentioned it to her.

She closed the door. I put the bottle of brandy that never arrived in my bag. Thinking about the stupidest bet I’ve ever made in my life. My heart still torn about handing that much information to a rookie. Desperation was a powerful thing. The man couldn’t fight to save his life, literally, but he had a powerful backer. If Luminus was involved, he couldn’t be a complete dud. At the end of the day, that high evergreen mark on his file was also a deciding factor. Still wasn’t enough, not for me to risk so much. It is better than being what I was right now, though.

I drank the rest of the brandy in one gulp, making sure to leave everything just the way I found it before heading out. As I locked the door, a song kept repeating inside of my head. “So I’m saving all my love for you…”