2006, 25th January

Space Station, Apotheosis

Ciara’s communicator buzzed as she headed down the gleaming white halls, trailing behind Aaron.

Ciara. Where are you right now?

“I’m looking for a dimensional mage right now, so I’m back at the space station.”

And who are you with?

“Aaron’s here with me.”

Send him to me.

The line went dead.

Aaron had turned at the sound of his name.

“Michael wants to see me?” He guessed.

Or he had just used his energy perception to pluck the sound straight from the communicator.

“Doesn’t sound like he wants to be kept waiting.” Ciara replied, moving ahead.

“When does he ever sound like that?” Aaron muttered under his breath, setting off at a jog to the office.

“How many days have you been looking into this matter of the mutants in Paris, Aaron?” Michael asked him, no sooner than he had stepped foot in the office.

“Err… It’s- been a couple of days?”

“Been a couple of days. Right. And what do you have to show for those couple of days?”

“Well… Ciara studied the corpse that was left behind-”

“Ciara was working with me before I sent her off to lend a hand. I asked what you two had done before that.”

“Umm… There weren’t really many leads, even before when we had a…. Err, live specimen.”

“And now you’ve brought it’s remains here to be traced by a dimensional mage. You could not have done this earlier?”

Aaron shifted uncomfortably where he stood.

Michael merely leaned back in his seat, putting his feet over his desk.

“Why are you here, Aaron? You’ve already learned the fundamentals of controlling your power, so as to not harm anyone. But all the time you’ve been singularly unmotivated. When I first took on this group, I met Ciara and Pierre individually. They weren’t exactly the paragons of what our order stands for, but they had a force of will that required me to engage with them individually. I did not bother to do so with you. You would go along with the flow around you, I knew that. The day we talked about Apotheosis’ operating policy and it’s treatment of the Hollows, I saw a hint of fire within you. I hoped then that you would prove me wrong. And now, I leave you unsupervised and you have done nothing but sit on your hands.”

“It wasn’t like I was the only one-” Aaron began to mumble, before Michael cut him off.

“Pierre does not have the talent for me to expect the sky of him, and he’s too deeply entrenched in his familial issues to ever truly wake to his potential. What is your excuse?”

Michael gestured at the window panes behind him, never taking his eyes off Aaron.

The glass flashed with several images, people with frozen expressions of anguish or clearly not conscious of anything around them or even themselves, captured in excruciatingly high detail.

“I remember you had some strong feelings about our responsibilities to Hollows. Well, here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is.”

Aaron put his hands up in a placating gesture.

“I’m sorry, alright? I get it. I’ll try to do better.”

“I need you to do better if we’re to have any chance at getting to the bottom of this mess. Pierre is too temperamental to be reliable. Where is he right now, anyway?”

“He said he had something to do back down there. Sent us on ahead. He seemed rather… flustered.”

“I see. And what about your father? Is he back home at-”

Michael paused, and Aaron filled in the gap.

“Crumlin.”

“Yes. Is he back there right now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t called him in a while.”

“Call him right now. Find out if he’s still there, or if he’s in France.”

“What, right now?”

“You’re relatively closer to your family than our other two colleagues, are you not? Is there a reason you cannot simply call up your family to ask after them?”

Aaron called up his residence at Crumlin, speaking in clipped tones before closing his fist on the conversation.

“Apparently, he is in Paris. Just like you said. What are the odds?”

“High. This means they’re meeting up for their business. This vampire should be there too. It’s past time I had a word with it.”

“How do you know it’ll be there?”

“If it’s reach extends over European crime to the extent I have heard, it’ll either be there, or have a proxy in place. If not, then I’ve overestimated the creature, and it isn’t worth engaging with any further.”

Michael placed his own communicator to his ear, speaking after a moment.

“If you’re with this vampire of yours right now, then hand the communicator to it. I would speak to it.”

Aaron could not resist the chance to eavesdrop on the conversation, turning up his force perception.

A heavy baritone voice spoke shortly from the other side.

You must be the hand steering this child. I will see you tomorrow at 9 pm. Right here.

And the line went dead.

Michael frowned slightly, then put the communicator away.

“Now we begin.”

Ciara found her willing dimensional mage easily enough upon asking around, and met Rayyan Kadri in the commons.

He took a look at the severed head, running a trace, before he even greeted her.

And then he properly looked at her, and recognized her for who she was.

And in that same moment, Ciara glimpsed at his thoughts, and knew who he was as well.

They tensed, in anticipation of battle.

Rayyan shuffled through millions of futures the instant he locked eyes with her, ending in victory, defeat, crippling injury, relatively mild inconvenience, and a million other possibilities besides.

And Ciara, reading his thoughts the whole time, saw the same.

Even not having exchanged a single spoken word, they both knew as much as they wished to know about one another.

Ciara retreated, still faced towards Rayyan, never taking her eyes off him.

Rayyan watched her leave his line of sight, even when he had used his dimensionalism to extend his field of view around the corner, then made his way to his own room, fishing his communicator from his pocket.

Ciara, meanwhile, made her way to Michael’s office, double checking her own mental shields along the way, having learned more than she had bargained for.

“I ran into one of Hans’ allies.”

With that startling revelation, she barged into the office, while Michael turned to look at her with a raised brow, and Aaron jumped, probably not having noticed her approach at all.

“Who was this?”

“One Rayyan Kadri. I was looking for a dimensional mage and stumbled onto him. I read his thoughts, and figured out who he was and what he knew.”

“You just go around reading people’s thoughts?” Aaron asked, surprised.

“Don't worry,” Ciara sneered back at him, “There’s usually nothing worth reading in your head anyway.”

“Hans wouldn’t have left anyone with any real knowledge of his plans behind here at Apotheosis, where any number of people could catch wind of them,” Michael interjected smoothly. “Did the man get a chance to actually run a trace on the remains you took with you to have checked out?”

“He did. And I saw what he saw.”

Michael waited for her to elaborate in silence.

“He got multiple traces off the thing- one to the penitentiary where these guys were holed up, one to the android that killed the thing, one to who the man used to be… err, before. Turns out, no one special.”

“Most of these victims wouldn’t be people that would be missed by many others, one way or another.”

“Yes, well, neither was this one. That trace didn’t lead to anything special. But the blood ran to a different source. I saw a shallow grave, not too far from where the penitentiary was. Unmarked.”

“Must have been the vampire whose blood they used to experiment. Did we get a track on who ran the experiment in the first place?”

“No, but if we run a trace from the grave site itself-”

Michael straightened up.

“Aaron. Get back down to Paris, and get Pierre immediately. There’s a non-zero chance that Hans already knew about that grave, but I want to make absolutely certain. And if he hasn’t then he’s certainly going to want to retrieve the corpse right now. Make haste. Ciara, fill him in on the location.”

Ciara transmitted the location from her mind directly to Aaron’s brain, who blinked in surprise.

Then he nodded, and set off at once.

Ciara shifted in place, checking the integrity of her shields once more.

Michael noticed this movement.

“Is there something else?”

She thought of what else she had seen in that man’s head- how he knew exactly who she was at first glance, from a trace ran off a vase of lavenders placed at the head of Michael’s bed-

Muddying the waters.

“You should have more faith in your own abilities, Ciara. I have never lied to you, but if you still cannot trust me, then trust yourself.”

Ciara’s eyes widened, but before she could recheck the integrity of her shields, Michael spoke again.

“It wasn’t hard to guess what purpose this Rayyan might have served for Hans while staying behind here on the Space Station. It was also not hard to guess what he might have found when he was snooping around. My lapse caused a breach in your privacy, and for that, you are free to blame me, but do you really believe your only use to me was to cover up my own tracks?”

Ciara still couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I… guess not?”

Michael paused to ponder something, before speaking again.

“I know what you're thinking. If that was indeed my goal, what would have stopped me from using my own mental powers to influence you and facilitate my goal. But you have a talent for astral magic yourself. Even had I tried, you could stop me. Don't lose confidence in yourself now.”

Ciara inhaled a deep breath, releasing it only when she was outside.

Elsewhere, Rayyan had hurriedly managed to contact Hans, telling him about the encounter he had just had.

I see, was the only forthcoming reply.

“You mean you already knew about that grave site, didn’t you? You have something waiting for them there.”

No.

The communicator went silent.

Rayyan understood that he had to be kept in the dark, having carelessly let the contents of his mind slip to the enemy.

But that simple answer stung.

Down at Paris once more, Aaron hastily called up Pierre.

What is it?

“Pierre? I’m back down here, pick me up.”

What’s going on?

“We have a new lead. It’s urgent.”

Of course it is.

“Listen, are you coming are not?”

Fine, wait there. I’ll pick you up.

Aaron waited, pacing impatiently, till Pierre pulled up to his location, heralded by the roar of his sports car’s engine.

“At least we’ll get there faster. Back to the penitentiary.”

They set off, pushing the limits of the vehicle wherever they could.

“What’s at the penitentiary?”

“Near the penitentiary. Apparently, the vampire whose blood they used to mutate that guy is buried there.”

“Ah, so we’re going to dig up bodies now? How nostalgic.”

Aaron wasn’t about to ask him why that particular activity was nostalgic, so he kept his eyes glued to the road ahead, until they had arrived once more, to the abandoned penitentiary at the outskirts of the city.

“All this hurrying up is well and good,” Pierre said, “But do we even have anything to dig the thing up? Our bare hands will hardly suffice.”

“Uh… Maybe you could dig something up from inside the building?”

“From a penitentiary?”

“Look, the important thing was beating any of Hans’ people to the punch.”

Aaron took a moment to scan the surrounding woods with his arcane senses.

“Doesn’t seem like anyone is here yet, or they could be camouflaged somehow and I haven’t managed to pierce their veils.”

“That paranoia will serve you well.” Pierre sounded amused as he leapt out of the car.

He entered the building, even as Aaron made his way to the location of the grave that had been burned into his brain.

He waited, until Pierre appeared from inside with what looked like blunt wooden planks, likely torn from the furniture.

“That’s the best you could manage?”

“Look, are we doing this or not?”

“Alright, if that’s the best you could find.”

“It is.”

So they began, inefficient tools in hand, scraping aside handfuls of dirt from where they knew the corpse to be.

As they worked, something shattered, and they froze.

Glass, glinting in the slight illumination of night, dark, thick liquid trickling into the earth.

“That’s blood.” Pierre breathed. “It should have congealed by now. Why isn’t it congealed?”

Because the container itself had been treated by some form of magic, Aaron perceived with his metamagic perceptions.

He had not sensed it earlier simply because it was too small an object, buried within the earth.

His energy perception gave away a single thump within the earth itself, and the other shoe dropped.

“Trap!” He hissed, pulling Pierre away, back towards the car.

With a growl, a humanoid creature pulled itself out from the soil, fangs glinting.

Immediately, Pierre had pulled a firearm from his side, and three shots rang through the silent night, two hitting center mass, and one going wide, burying itself in the earth.

The vampire, instead of keeling over and dying, furiously lunged towards them, even as they retreated to their car, with inhuman speed.

“Head!” Aaron shouted, knowing normal shots wouldn’t do anything.

But hitting the head was easier said than done, especially with a target that moved so blindingly fast.

It tackled Pierre, the immediate threat, and Aaron heard something crack, even as the other man screamed, and the firearm skittered uselessly away.

Control Gravity.

With a surprised yowl, the vampire flew upward, gravitational polarity pointed to the sky, and Aaron took the opportunity to jump on the weapon, before letting the spell fade.

His adversary fell onto the earth with a crunch, a split second of surprised pain- and it was enough to empty the cartridge into its skull leaving little but fine red paste behind.

He hurried to Pierre.

“What’s broken?”

“Ankle… need to go. Gunshots.. Too loud.”

Grunting, Aaron pushed Pierre into the passenger seat of the car, before retreating the emaciated corpse, and after a struggle, stuffing it into the boot.

He swung himself into the passenger seat, keeping the speed even, and prayed to whatever was out there that the stench wasn’t too strong.

Or he would have to get creative to explain a headless man in the boot of their car and his possession of the likely unregistered firearm that killed him.

They pulled up to the local Apotheosis installation, and Aaron clambered out of the car, Pierre’s weight supported over his shoulders, as two people in grey rushed out to assist them.

“There’s- a corpse, in the boot. Get it out, I have to take it with me.”

Their eyes widened with surprise, but they nodded stiffly and set off to do as they were told.

Walking through the portal installed within, they all found themselves on the space station once more.

Aaron dragged Pierre to the medical ward, the people with the corpse of the vampire tailing him.

When Pierre was safely on the bed, Aaron finally turned his attention onto the corpse.

“We need to get that in a freezer or something, preserve it before it goes bad- or worse than it already is.”