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Rose didn’t even mean to do it.
She just panicked, honestly. Everything was going so wrong so fast, and her brain was empty, spiralling into a full-blown panic.
“And what do we have here, Rosie?” The booming voice of none other than Karl Heisenberg makes her jump and spin around frantically. “Another life threatening situation you put yourself into?”
The man is standing a few feet away from her, hammer on his shoulder, smiling like the cat that got the canary. Rose can’t even feel annoyed at the sight. She’s way too surprised to do that.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, her voice a tad too hysterical for her tastes.
She’s not a kid anymore. She shouldn’t be panicking like that every time her powers decide it’s time for a new grand surprise. She’s almost eighteen! Gone are the times when she cried in bathroom stalls because her skin was producing weird white sweat and the other kids were mean to her.
Karl peers at her from behind his glasses. He then glances at the room – dilapidate and run down, most furniture broken and useless, covered in dust and cobweb.
“Charming place you got here. Are you playing fixer-upper now? Needed a change of career?” He puts his hammer down and leans on the handle, a smug smile on his face.
“I...” Rose starts, and stops, because she has no idea what to say to explain the situation. It’s a mess, honestly. She has the worst luck ever. “No,” she says lamely, grimacing.
Something bangs against the door she has managed to block with a broken dresser, and she jumps, whirls on her feet, hands going for her handgun until she remembers – she doesn’t have any bullet left, that’s why she was panicking.
“Need a hand?” Karl asks, cool as a cucumber.
“Can you even do anything?” Rose grits out, looking around the room, trying to find something, anything. A baseball bat, perhaps.
“I don’t know, you tell me, Rosie. You’re the one who called me here. I was just hanging around, enjoying a very nice movie with a glass of whiskey, and then, poof!” He even mimes an explosion with his hands. Sometimes, Rose forgets how lame the man truly is. “I’m here. With my hammer, which is really strange, because it wasn’t anywhere near me. By the way, have you seen Transformers? Terrible movie, but the robots are very fun to watch.”
The door rattles, and Rose can hear the thing snarls, frustrated.
“Can you use your powers?” she asks, instead of explaining what’s going on. It can wait. She just has to leave this place alive.
Karl frowns, and lifts a hand. His fingers twitch, and the lonely fork lying on the floor at his feet rises in the air, and flies toward his outstretched hand.
He smiles, all teeth and no humour.
“I can, Rosie. Who do I need to kill?”
For once, something is going right in Rose’s life. She sights, relieved.
“Well, this is a mess,” Karl says, once the creature behind the door is dead, skewered like a particularly gruesome kebab. Karl is not one to do things in half.
Rose, frantically searching for some ammo, just nods.
“Care to explain what’s going on, Rosie?” Karl strolls toward her, taking the sight with calculating eyes. Sometimes, Rose forgets how smart he can be. He hides it well, behind his boisterous, almost showman attitude.
The street is empty, the houses abandoned and run-down, a chilling wind wiping the dusty road and making Rose clenches her teeth. The bodies of the creatures Karl gleefully killed litter the ground, dark blood pooling underneath their already rotting flesh.
“We were called. The Hound Wolf Squad and me,” she starts, breaking open a crate and sighting when it’s empty. Karl snorts and repeats “Hound Wolf Squad” like it’s some inside joke only he can understand. “Some kind of zombie situation, Chris said. We just needed to clean up.”
Karl lifts one brow. His displeasure toward Chris is well-known. Still, he stays silent, standing guard beside her while she tries to open another crate.
“It was way messier than we though. Way more zombies, and panicked civilians. We got separated, and here I am. Alone, with no ammo.” The crate is not empty, but it’s nothing she can use. Just some junk. She groans in frustration and pushes the crate away.
Karl’s hammer is covered in gore and blood. He flicks away what seems to be a bit of brain matter, and nods sympathetically. He slips his glasses down his nose to look at her in the eyes.
“And why didn’t you use your powers, Rosie?”
Rose opens her mouth, and then closes it. He doesn’t know.
Does she want him to know?
“I did,” she says instead, awkwardly pointing at him. “You’re here, right? I... summoned you. Because I can do that. Apparently.”
Karl grins, all smug and satisfied.
“Yes, you did. And congratulations, you can bring people back from the dead. I don’t know if the town folks are going to worship you or accuse you of witchcraft and burn you at the stakes.”
“It’s the 21th century, Karl. We don’t do that anymore.”
He laughs, but there is an edge in his smile that Rose really doesn’t like. Like he knows something she doesn’t.
“Does Daddy know you’re here, running around killing zombies?” He asks, putting his glasses back.
“We talked about it,” Rose eludes, starting to walk toward the end of the street. She can’t stay idle for too long, and she needs to find a way to contact Chris. Karl follows her, his footsteps almost silent on the pavement. “He knows I’m in contact with Chris.”
Karl throws her what he probably thinks is a very meaningful glance.
“Why did you summon me?” He gestures toward the street. “I mean, I’m sure Papa Winters would have been delighted to give you a hand. Not that I mind, Rosie, I love being back in the mortal realm.”
She doesn’t know. It wasn’t even conscious on her part, she just wished she wasn’t alone to deal with this mess, and then Karl was here.
“Or even Eveline. The little gremlin has a mean streak, you know,” Karl muses, grinning even wider, his tone way too fond to be anything but proud.
As much as the man insists on being Eveline’s uncle, and nothing else, Rose is not sure why he keeps lying to himself like that. Even her dad, whose feelings toward Karl are complicated at best, can recognize the distinctively paternal relationship between these two.
“I don’t know,” Rose mutters, leaning against a wall to take a big breath and tries to think. She’s not in danger right now, the streets are calm and empty, and Karl is dutifully watching over her, but still.
She needs to find Chris.
“I need to find Chris,” she says, in lack of anything better. “He’s probably going to blow up this place as soon as we are out.”
“How surprising,” Karl sights.
They start walking again, toward the edge of the town, where Rose hopes the squad has regrouped.
On their way, they kill a few more zombies, who pop up from behind walls like cheap jump scares. Rose uses her power to glue their feet to the ground, and Karl smashes their head and heart with his hammer, or send a few metal scrapes flying to behead them.
Then, as they are getting closer to the small forest encircling the town, Karl stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
“You could have done this without me,” he states. “You’re a regular pint-sized atom bomb, Rosie.”
“What,” Rose starts, but he keeps talking.
“You’re powerful, and you know it. What’s wrong?”
She avoids his eyes, looking at the trees. It’s very quiet, a few birds chipping despite the massacre that took place in the town. Life goes on despite the atrocities, she had learned.
“It’s just...” she starts, and Karl gives her an encouraging nod. “A few months ago. It wasn’t as bad as this town, but still, Chris asked me to come. And I lost control. Almost blew up the building and killed everyone in it, including our team. I managed to jump out of a window just in time.”
She can’t stop now, the weigh on her heart lifting bit by bit, because if someone can understand her, it’s probably Karl.
“I completely destroyed the next building though. It was empty, Chris told me afterward. No one died. But it was like...”
She shakes her head. The building had totally collapsed, great spikes of white crystal going through concrete like butter, windows busted, wires sparkling.
Everyone had given her a wide berth on the way home. Even Chris has sounded a bit guarded that night, asking her if she needed a break.
“Apocalyptic,” she finishes, hoping it’s enough.
Karl sights and leans on his hammer’s handle. His glasses slip a little, showing his eyes. He looks serious, for once.
“Rose, if you don’t use your powers, how the fuck can you learn to control them?”
He has a point.
“I don’t want to hurt people,” she whispers, and Karl laughs, throwing his head back. “It’s true! Stop making fun of me!”
“I know, Rosie, I know.” He takes off his glasses to rub his eyes clean of the tears of mirth that have gathered here. “But believe me, you don’t want to keep them all bottled up. At the first sign of danger, you’re going to explode. And it won’t be pretty. So learn how to control them. Practice. Find what and where your limits are.”
She doesn’t ask him why he seems to talk by experience. There are things better left unsaid.
When they reach the middle of the forest, where Chris’s team is hiding and probably waiting for the helicopter to arrive, Karl leaves, tipping his hat like a true gentleman.
The next time it happens, she’s a bit more prepared for it.
It’s not Karl, this time, but Eveline. The ten years old is deeply unimpressed with the mess, and says as much as soon as she gets Rose’s attention.
“I know, I know,” Rose mutters, running past her to reach the door. Eveline is right behind her and slips into the bathroom one second before Rose closes the door.
A chilling laugh can be heard outside, on another floor.
“Come on, come play with me!” a voice singsongs.
“Who is that?” Eveline asks, looking around the room and scrunching up her nose. The bathroom is downright dirty, and Rose really doesn’t want to know why the bathtub is filled with what appears to be blood.
Also, she doesn’t want to think too hard about the fact that she knows that it’s blood without having to look twice.
“A mutant,” Rose whispers, putting herself against the door and hoping the creature won’t try to open it. “They call him Pinocchio.”
Eveline lifts an eyebrow, a very Karl-like gesture.
“Pinocchio,” she repeats, probably judging very hard whoever though it was funny to call a bio weapon like that.
“Yeah, apparently he wants to be a real boy and all of that,” Rose whispers, gluing her ear to the door. She can’t hear anything except her rabid heartbeats. “Beats calling him ominous stuff like Plague or Eliminator, if you ask me.”
“Did they send you here to kill him?”
Rose closes her eyes and sights, cursing Chris and his very convincing arguments. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
A lonely, abandoned hotel in Texas, where a bio weapon took refuge after escaping a facility. The hotel was thankfully empty, having closed down five years ago, and the closest town was thirty miles away.
He hadn’t killed anyone, as far as they knew, at least not on purpose.
“No,” she mumbles, opening her eyes. Eveline is looking at her, her eyes cold and flat. “They want me to talk to him. I was send as a... negotiator.”
“And you believe them?”
Rose winces. From behind the door, she can hear footsteps, growing closer and closer.
They stay silent. Pinocchio (she so going to punch whoever decided to call him that) lumbers around, humming and calling for her.
Once he’s gone, Rose slips to the floor and puts her head in her hands.
She was doing so good. She had signed up for online classes for college, and even got her driving licence, a real one, not one forged by Chris so she could drive the escape car in case of emergency. She had found a little flat in a really nice town, went through the trouble of introducing herself to her neighbours, and she’s even on first-name basis with the clerk at the grocery store.
And then, Chris called her, all gruff and apologetic, and had asked her for help.
He explained the situation, repeating that she could say no, he could cover for her.
“But if we can’t talk him down, he’s going to get himself killed” he also said, and he knew, he knew she didn’t want that, knew she wanted people to live even if they were monsters, knew she had complicated feelings toward her own nature. “The BSAA is looking for him, and for what we know, they are not going to go through the troubles of keeping him alive. They probably plan on blowing up the hotel and pretend it was a gas leak.”
So she said yes, and here she is. Stuck in a dirty hotel bathroom with Eveline hovering over her with a very put-upon expression on her face.
“What does he want?” Eveline finally asks, sitting in front of her. She’s wearing a new dress, a black one as always, but with more flair. Probably Donna’s work.
“To be a real boy,” Rose repeats, feeling a bit light-headed. “Like we all do” she adds in a whisper.
She knows why Eveline is here. When Pinocchio had started chasing her, delighted to have a playmate who could handle his sharp claws, she had wished for someone who could understand this creature more than she did.
Pinocchio is not as young as Eveline, his file claims his mind is at least fifteen years old, but still. He’s a kid.
“Not something you can provide,” Eveline notes, tilting her head. “Why am I here? Uncle Karl told me about last time, with the zombies. You couldn’t say how you did it.”
She leans a bit closer, looking Rose in the eyes.
“You shouldn’t be able to do that,” she breathes out, something calculating in her eyes. “We are dead. We should just be projections, unable to interact with the outside word. But Uncle Karl was able to use his powers. His hammer could smash brains and bones.”
She seems to relinquish in the gory memory.
“And me,” she adds, almost an afterthought. Always thinking about her family first, Eveline. Always. “I’m here, and it’s different from before. I can use my powers.”
She flicks her hand in the air, and thin tendrils of black mold erupt from the dirty floor.
“You could bring us back, you know,” Eveline muses, making the tendrils slither in the air, reaching for Rose’s shoes. “Permanently, I mean. You are linked to the magemycete, after all. To the realm where we all reside now.” Her black eyes, calm as a lake before a storm, rise to meet Rose’s. “It would be easy for you. You’re stronger than us. You could give us a body.”
Rose has thought about it, after Karl’s surprise visit. Oh, not very seriously, more like some kind of “what if” situation, but still.
What if she could bring her father back? Have him by his side to guide her, assure her that everything would be fine, let him deal with Chris and the squad and the BSAA and everything?
“I can’t,” she whispers, shaking her head.
“You can. But the price would be high,” Eveline concedes, and the mold retreats toward her outstretched hand. “You would have to root yourself somewhere, give the magemycete a place to regrow.”
Like Miranda’s village. Overrun by the cadou. Like the Baker’s house, where you couldn’t breathe without swallowing the mold’s spores.
Rose could do it, she knows that. Could choose a place far away from everything, and gives her very particular brand of fungus a place to expand. She could use the mold to give her father a body, maybe even bring the others, since they seem so willing to help her. She wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.
It’s a pipe dream, something she only thinks about in the dead of the night. She can’t do it, won’t do it, can’t deal with the consequences of such actions. It would make her no better than Miranda or Eveline, who didn’t care how many people they hurt to get what they wanted.
She thinks about a man calling her “Eveline 2.0”, about the government official who came one day and looked at her with a calculating glint in his eyes, and said she had “so much potential”. She thinks about people watching her warily every time her control slips, about Chris saying she shouldn’t live in big city, about her monthly check-ups with the team’s doctor, about the BSAA.
Eveline smiles, cold and mean, like she knows exactly what Rose is thinking.
“Be careful what you wish for, Rosemary Winters,” she says as the black mold disappears in her palm. And then, abruptly changing the subject, as if it doesn’t hold any interest anymore, she asks: “Do you want me to kill him?”
It’s a trap, Rose knows it. If she says yes, she will lose whatever trust she had managed to build between them, the fragile relationship she has tried so hard to cultivate during the past couple of years. Eveline will do it, probably, but she won’t consider Rose family anymore.
“No, it’s not why you are here,” Rose states firmly, putting as much sincerity in her voice as she can. “I just... I wanted someone who could help me talk to him. Chris seemed to think I could do it, because I’m... a bio-weapon too, in a way. But I’m scared.”
Eveline nods, waiting for her to continue.
“I’m scared of saying the wrong thing.” Rose rakes her hand through her hair. She cut them not so long ago, tired of the long strands getting everywhere. It’s growing again, reaching her shoulders now. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
Eveline stands, adjusting her dress. She smiles, a small thing that reaches her eyes, and holds out her hand.
“Let’s talk to him then,” she says, and Rose grabs her hand and gets up.
When they find Pinocchio, he’s just hanging around the hotel’s hall, scratching his back and looking morosely toward the window.
The glass is too dirty for him to see anything, but Rose knows Chris and his team are waiting for her to give them the signal just outside the hotel, on the parking lot.
Pinocchio turns around, hearing them approach. Eveline is holding Rose’s hand, and doesn’t even blink when the creature rises to his full size – he must be seven feet tall, and his head almost touches the ceiling.
His skin is pale and littered with scars, red veins bulging under the surface. When he smiles, his sharp teeth glints into the yellowish lights and Rose can see that he has two rows, like sharks. It’s hard to remember that he’s younger than Rose, younger than Eveline.
“Hi,” Rose says, standing a few feet from him, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.
“You came back to play with me?” Pinocchio asks, his voice too deep for someone his age. His smile stretches, showing even more teeth.
“Sure,” Rose manages to say. “And I brought someone to play with us. This is Eveline, my...” she almost says friend, but it doesn’t feel right. She meets Eveline’s eyes. “My little sister,” she decides.
“I’m older than you,” Eveline hisses, but she doesn’t try to slip from her grasp, and she even smiles when Pinocchio looks at her more closely. “Hello. Nice to meet you.”
Pinocchio’s smile drops. He takes a step back, arms crossing protectively on his chest. There are a few bullets wounds here, right where his heart is.
Eveline squeezes her hand in warning.
“He’s scared of me,” she whispers, sounding very calm about this fact. Unflappable as ever. “Don’t do anything.”
Rose wasn’t about to start shouting or attacking Pinocchio, she’s not stupid, but she dutifully stays silent.
“We don’t want you any harm,” Eveline states, boring into Pinocchio’s eyes. “We understand what you are going through. We can help you.”
Pinocchio tilts his head, looking at Eveline like she’s a particularly hard puzzle to solve.
“You smell like rot,” he mumbles, eyes narrowing as he leans forward. “You are not a real girl either.”
“Neither of us are,” Eveline answers, smiling a bit. “I made peace with that fact years ago. And you should too.”
Rose has the feeling Eveline is not just talking to Pinocchio but she keeps her mouth shut. She’s so scared; she can easily imagine the other mutant suddenly lashing out if she says the wrong words and ripping her to shreds with his claws. Or trying to run away, jumping through the windows and getting shot with the grenade launcher Chris brought with him, “just in case”.
Pinocchio’s eyes glance at her, surprisingly thoughtful.
“And you, you smell like ice,” he says, and Rose tries to give him a winning smile.
“Yep. We all smell like... stuff, here. That’s why we are special,” she chokes out despite her growing panic. This is not going well.
“What do I smell like?” Pinocchio asks, leaning back a little bit, and Eveline laughs.
It’s her real laugh, not the one that screams “unstable kid in a cheap horror movie.”
“Blood. And like a really hot summer day.” She doesn’t even need to think about it. “It’s a really nice smell.”
“Thank you,” Pinocchio says, his smile coming back inch by inch. “Do you want to play with me?”
“Later,” Eveline assures. “But I want to talk with you first.”
Pinocchio doesn’t like that, Rose can tell. His eyes narrow and he shifts his weight on his feet, looking at Eveline like she just spoiled his birthday party.
“What do you want to do next?” Rose asks in a rush, squeezing Eveline’s hand in an apology for breaking her vow of silence. “When we’re done playing?”
Pinocchio’s attention shifts on her, and it’s not as scary as it was five minutes ago. He looks lost for a moment, blinking and scratching the wounds on his chest. They still bleed sluggishly, leaving dark trails of blood on his skin.
“I don’t want to be hurt.” His voice is barely above a whisper, and Rose feels the stupid urge to give him a hug.
“I can arrange that,” she promises, and Eveline clears her throat. “I swear I won’t let people hurt you. As long as you don’t hurt people in turn.”
“But if people hurt you first, you can defend yourself,” Eveline interjects, and Rose enthusiastically nods.
Pinocchio seems to think about it for a few seconds. There is a clock ticking somewhere in the hall, making the moment way more stressful than it already is. Rose wants to shoot at it just to make it stop.
“Alright. But first, we play,” the bio-weapon decides, and his demeanour changes, slipping back into a more carefree, relaxed version of the scared kid he is.
“What do you want to play?” Eveline’s voice has a tinge of excitement she usually hides. She’s, after all, a ten years old little girl. She rarely meets anyone who wants to play with her.
They end up playing tag, because hide and seek is a very bad idea for three jumpy bio-weapons.
Later, when Rose has warned Chris that Pinocchio was willingly coming with them and he better hide his grenade launcher and put on a smile, Eveline takes Rose’s hand and says she has to go.
“Say hi to my father for me,” Rose asks, wondering if the girl will stab her if she tries to hug her.
“Say it yourself, you wimp,” Eveline hisses.
But she gives her a quick hug before disappearing.
“Oh dear, what did you do?” Donna breathes out, looking almost alarmed. Considering how stone-faced she usually is, Rose wonders what she looks like right now.
“Nothing. Just... tried a new thing.” She shrugs, desperately trying to appear cool and collected.
It’s not working, if Donna’s slight wince is anything to go by. Rose would almost prefer for her to be wearing her veil, just so she didn’t have to see her chiding look.
“It’s a mess,” Donna states, and with an imperious gesture, orders her to come sit next to her.
Donna is a strange sight amidst her small, one bedroom apartment. Her black, regal dress, her aristocratic posture, everything looks incongruous. She’s like a lost time-traveller from the 19th century, sitting on the shitty couch Rose has found in the local thrift store for a great bargain (55 dollars, and she had to move it herself).
Still, Rose obeys and sits right next to her, feeling a bit awkward. Her powers really don’t listen to her. She never asked for this, honestly, she just wished someone was here to help with her hair (and her outfit, and maybe her makeup, and basically everything).
“What did you do?” Donna sights, a hairbrush appearing in her hand.
“I tried to curl them,” Rose mutters, feeling much younger than she really is. “It didn’t go as planned.”
“I can see that.”
With practiced movements, Donna starts working on the failed curls and terrible knots. She’s gentle, not going to hard, but Rose still winces a bit.
“Why were you trying to curl your hair?” Donna asks, a few minutes later, once Rose has been lulled into a false sense of safety.
What can she say, except the truth?
“I have a date,” she confesses, and the hairbrush stops for a second, then starts working on a knot like nothing happened. “And I wanted... I don’t know, to try something different.”
Donna hums.
This is awful. Rose wants to apologize, says she didn’t mean to call Donna, assures her everything is going great and she can deal with it on her own.
Except, Donna isn’t the worst person she could have summoned. She’s more honest with her feelings than most, always stating what’s on her mind very clearly, despite her discreet attitude and soft voice. And Rose kind of wants to stay here, on her shitty couch, with Donna Beneviento, who once tortured her with mannequins and dolls, brushing her hair and fixing her mistakes.
“I can braid them if you want,” Donna offers, once she’s done with the hairbrush. “Or do a chignon.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s better if I don’t do anything?”
She turns to look at her, almost pleading her to say it’s a stupid idea to go on a date when you can blow up a building by accident. She’s terrified. What if something goes wrong and she loses control? What if she’s weird and awkward and she ends up all alone?
Donna gives her a Mona Lisa smile, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, a very affectionate gesture that makes Rose misses her mom, suddenly. Her mom would know what to say, what to do. If her mom was here, she wouldn’t be going on a stupid date.
“A braid would be nice,” Donna decides, and Rose nods, and lets her do what she wants.
It’s silent again between them, not exactly tense, but not relaxed either. Rose has always been less at ease with Donna, finding it difficult to get a read on her, when the woman usually hides behind her veil.
“Eveline told me about the boy.” Donna’s voice almost makes her jump.
She can’t turn her head to look at her, not when Donna is braiding her hair, and it makes her nervous. She can’t imagine what kind of face the woman is making. Is she curious? Concerned? Amused?
“Yes. Pinocchio,” Rose mumbles, feeling Donna’s fingers work with practiced ease in her hair. “He was doing okay, last time I checked.”
Chris has done good on his promise, and found a small place for the bio-weapon to hide and live. A research center in the wood, in the middle of the Appalachian mountains, as far away for hiking trails as possible. He’s not alone, there is a small team of soldiers and scientists living with him, monitoring and studying him.
Rose went to see him a month ago. Pinocchio seemed content enough. People didn’t hurt him here. They played outside for a while, and watched the sun set behind the mountains together.
“They say...” she starts, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “They say he’s probably going to die soon. Whatever they did to him, in that lab... it reduced his life span to nothing. A few month, maybe a year if we can find a way to slow the process.”
She looks at her hand, the white veins peeking under the surface.
“Accelerated aging,” she adds, thinking about Eveline. “They don’t build bio-weapons to last.”
Donna hums, and Rose feels her tie the braid with a hair tie. Pinocchio hadn’t been particularly upset about his imminent death, and maybe that was the worst of it. He always knew he wasn’t meant to live, knew he was just a thing, a tool to be used and discarded.
“I’m sorry,” Donna says, and Rose turns to look at her. She looks as composed as ever, but her eyes are warm, sincere.
“Me too,” Rose whispers. “I wish I could help him. But at least he’s going to die in peace. I think.”
Donna puts a cold hand on her cheek, the ghost of a smile on her lips.
“Then you did everything you could. Compassion for a monster is not an easy thing to have.”
Rose nods, and they stay like that for a bit, just thinking about Pinocchio and his tragic fate. Then Donna moves her hand away, picking the hairbrush and adjusting her skirt. Rose clears her throat and checks the braid. It’s very nice, not something she could have done herself.
“Who is the lucky one?” Donna asks, looking at her outfit with a critical eye, and Rose suddenly remembers that she has a date tonight.
She winces, fiddling with her hands.
She takes a deep breath. Time to see if Donna’s village really was as backward as it seemed.
“Her name’s Charlie.”
Donna stills for a moment, and Rose feels her heart drops, cold sweat building at the base of her spine.
Then Donna smiles and nods and asks her if she’s nice, how did they met, and where they are going for the date.
“She’s very nice, we met at the painting class I take on Wednesday, and we are going to have a drink in a bar, and then we will probably go see a movie,” Rose rambles on.
“Are you going to wear... this?” Donna asks, probably trying to sound nice but failing spectacularly.
“What? No, this is my pyjama! I had a few outfits planned, let me show you...”
Rose shows her the outfits, get a firm nod of approval on the third one, and Donna tells her to forget the makeup, she doesn’t have time if she doesn’t want to be late, and her face looks good anyway.
Once Rose is ready, feeling weirdly giddy at the prospect of going on a date, not panicking anymore, Donna gives her a very quick hug, the kind where their skins don’t touch because Donna is like that.
“Have a good time, my dear,” and with that, she’s gone, and Rose’s crappy apartment seems a bit too empty for her tastes.
She grabs her bag, checks her reflection one last time, and leaves.
Later that night, when she comes home, a bit drunk and high on Charlie’s very nice smiles and laughs, there is a doll sitting on the couch.
She’s dark haired, wearing a black dress, and there is a little veil on her head. Her porcelain face is scared near her right eye. There is also a note.
“In case of broken heart” it says.
And the doll springs to life, knives and scissors bursting for her sides. Rose laughs, too drunk to deal with this, and she gently moves to doll to crash on the couch.
Rose is avoiding her dad.
It’s just that she doesn’t want him to know that she didn’t manage to avoid her destiny. There is always something, a situation that requires the insight of a bio-weapon, or the pure destructive powers she wields. There is always Chris, looking apologetic and tired, telling her than she’s their last resort before they have to bring out the big guns. There is always a sad kid with scarred limbs and a heart too big, or a horrifying creature trying to make sense of the cruel hand they have been dealt. There is always a zombie outbreak or a mad scientist locking themselves into their ridiculous manor and threatening to release another deadly virus or a city getting overrun by ferocious dogs that drank at the wrong pond.
Right now, it’s the mad scientist situation.
And it’s pissing her off.
It’s an old complain at this point, but she was doing so good. She’s been dating Charlie for a few months now, and it’s very nice. She moved to another apartment, a bit bigger and closer to the nicer neighbourhood. She signed up for pottery class, because why not.
And now she’s running away from a creature who is 99% tentacles and 1% unbridled rage, trying to find the goddamn key the mad scientist used to lock the door to the basement, where his lab probably is.
It’s always the basement, with the mad scientist.
And the thing is, if she wants to find the key to the basement, she has to open the music room, except that she needs to find the partition and the flute to play the bit that opens this door, and she knows the partition is hidden somewhere in the garden, but in the garden there was the tentacle monster and now she’s running.
And trying to negotiate with said tentacle monster because why not. At this point she wishes she didn’t have such a strong moral compass and could just blow up the manor and not care about the consequences.
Deadly virus, hundreds of dead and another zombie outbreak she will have to clean up, these are the consequences, she reminds herself.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she yells over her shoulder. She jumps on the side to avoid a tentacle, and keeps running. “We don’t have to fight, you know! I really don’t want to kill you!”
Tentacle Monster doesn’t care. Tentacle Monster has no regards for her feelings and tries to grab her legs.
She curses and almost crashes into a wall. The garden was a bad idea. Maybe she can lead Tentacle Monster on a merry chase through the manor, and slips right past them once they’ve lost her.
Sounds like a plan, she decides. More running, that’s great for her stamina. She quickly throws a glance behind her. Tentacle Monster is trying to climb the stairs, and has a hard time doing so, probably because of the proverbial tentacles.
And then she bumps into a statue that wasn’t here last time she checked, two seconds ago, before looking over her shoulder.
She crashes down with another curse, immediately rolls to her knees and gets up as fast as she can, hand automatically going for the gun strapped to her side.
It’s not a statue.
It’s a living, breathing, nine foot tall woman who looks deeply unimpressed with little Rose standing in front of her. Behind her, she can hear Tentacle Monster (she really needs to find them another name) gurgling in rage.
The hat. The dress. The sneer. The... size.
“Alcina Dimistrecu?” Rose breathes out, feeling completely stunned. She has heard of the woman, well she has heard Karl complaining about his dear dead sister and giving her detailed, probably biased run-downs of every fights the two siblings had.
And also her father, who told her the woman once put butcher hooks through his hands and threatened to drink his blood. While her daughters giggled in the background and asked if they could have a taste.
What the fuck is Lady Alcina Dimistrecu doing here, in Professor Fizzwizzle’s architectural nightmare of a manor?
“Oh, you must be Rosemary,” the tallest woman on earth says. Her voice is just as posh and condescending as Rose imagined. “They warned me this kind of... mishaps could happen.”
“What. Who? How?” Rose manages to say.
She looks behind her and yes, Tentacle Monster has finally vanquished the stairs, and is coming for her, tentacles wiggling furiously.
“Okay, how about we talk about it when I’m not been chased by this amicable fellow?” Rose desperately tries to slips past Lady Dimistrecu, but the woman is blocking the hallway with her voluminous frame.
An unimpressed eyebrow rises. It’s not even been five seconds and the woman already thinks she’s an idiot.
“What a disgusting sight,” Lady Dimistrecu says, sounding almost affronted. “Why don’t you deal with it, dearest?”
Oh. Is she... not annoyed by Rose, but by Tentacle Monster? That’s encouraging.
Rose jumps to avoid another sweeping tentacle, and smiles apologetically.
“Sorry, I just prefer to talk things out before shooting at potential sentient creatures,” she confesses, using a bit of her powers to make Tentacle Monster back off. They almost tumble down the stair, trying to avoid the piercing crystal tendrils erupting from the carpet. “Wouldn’t want to set a bad example, you know? It could be me, right here, trying to kill someone with my tentacles because they interrupted my nap.”
She’s nervously rambling. Lady Dimistrecu looks at her haughtily.
“Well, at least you didn’t inherit your father’s brash nature. He was, unfortunately, the kind to shoot first and ask question later. But what can you expect, he was a man, after all.”
With that, she takes a step forward, forcing Rose to plaster herself against the wall to avoid been walked on. The woman, staring down at Tentacle Monster with all her might, puts her hands on her hips and makes a disapproving sound.
“How pathetic. Look at you, rolling around, ruining the carpet and making a mess of everything.”
Maybe it’s her tone, commanding and conceited, or her words, just as arrogant, but Tentacle Monster actually stops wiggling and listens.
Rose feels kind of miffed. She had tried to talk to the creature for at least fifteen minutes while running around and avoiding getting eaten. Is it because she’s not nine feet tall?
“This young lady here wants you to calm down. I suggest you obey her demand, or you will be dealt with,” Lady Dimistrecu continues, not caring about Rose’s ego. “And I assure you, I have enough experience dealing with pests of your kind. So go, shoo! Go back to the swamp you crawled from.”
She even makes a small, very elegant sweeping gesture with her hand.
“They came from a pond, actually,” Rose timidly interjects, but Tentacle Monsters is already turning around, or trying to. The numerous tentacles make it hard.
Lady Dimistrecu looks at her, eyebrows raised.
“There, the situation is resolved. Now, dearest, what are you doing here, running around like a headless chicken?”
She actually sounds interested. Rose thinks about Karl calling her a “stone cold bitch” and wonders if he was just jealous the woman simply didn’t care about him.
“There is... a scientist, in the basement. He has a virus, very dangerous, yadda yadda, I need to stop him before he kills hundreds of people,” she explains, accompanied by the squelching sounds of Tentacle Monsters trying to climb down the stairs.
Lady Dimistrecu steps closer, forcing Rose to twist her neck to look at her face. Holy shit, she’s so tall.
“And uh, I really don’t know why you are here. Last time I checked you weren’t...” She trails off awkwardly. As far as she knows, Eveline hasn’t brought anyone new from the death. She contents herself with her small circle of people she can trust, and it’s great.
Lady Dimistrecu smiles, almost fondly, and it’s really weird.
“Never underestimate the pettiness of a ten years old little girl. My dear brother learned it the hard way,” she declares, one hand adjusting her hat, sounding very satisfied.
“Eveline brought you back to prove a point?” Rose breathes out, feeling a bit lightheaded. She knew Eveline was a bit petty and arrogant, but the kid loves Karl more than anyone else in the mushroom kingdom.
“And don’t underestimate my dear brother’s capacity for angering people he really shouldn’t anger,” Lady Dimistrecu adds with a charming smile that shows a bit too much teeth. “He got into a ridiculous fight with our dear Eveline, and she decided that I was the perfect punishment for his attitude.”
Rose can’t believe her ears.
“He was furious, of course, but he loves the little brat too much. He came around, eventually.” She shrugs elegantly, and the way she pronounces brat makes Rose believe she’s not immune to Eveline’s very particular brand of creepy cuteness.
“That’s...” Rose starts, grasping at straws. “That sounds like them,” she says, with a smile that probably looks like a grimace.
She can’t believe these two. She needs to talk to them, as soon as she’s done with Fizzwizzle’s house of horrors.
“They told me about you. How you can... call us to your aid,” Lady Dimistrecu waits a bit, pondering her next words. “You even called Donna, the poor thing. She hasn’t seen a fight in decades; I hope it wasn’t too hard for her.”
“I didn’t call her to fight,” Rose assures immediately. “I just... needed help. To get ready for a date.”
Lady Dimistrecu looks at her like she’s the stupidest creature on earth. Rose clears her throat and gestures a bit frantically around her.
“It was very nice to meet you, really, but I kind of need to get this whole mess sorted. We can, huh, talk later? If you want?” She’s unsure of where she’s standing with Alcina Dimistrecu. She has never met the woman, and is honestly a bit suspicious of her. She seems perfectly polite, but Rose can remember her dad’s face when he told her about the wine cellar under the castle.
“I could stay with you, dearest,” Lady Dimistrecu points out. “This situation does not seem safe for you. And I would hate to be considered a worse guardian than Heisenberg.”
Rose’s brain freezes for a second, the word “guardian” repeating over and over. She laughs through gritted teeth, and nods.
“Well, if you want to stay, be my guest. Just a warning, I need to go back to the garden to open the door to the music room.”
Lady Dimistrecu’s black eyes light up.
“Oh, a puzzle? How delightful. I used to have some in my castle, for security measures.”
So, to the garden they go.
“Seriously, what the fuck?” Rose asks one night.
Eveline is sitting on her couch, holding up Donna’s doll, examining the knives protruding from her side. Karl is leaning against the only window, looking at the stars and fiddling with an unlit cigar. Rose has firmly forbidden him from smoking in her apartment.
“Language,” Eveline says, almost automatically, and Karl snorts.
“No, really, you brought back Dimistrecu from the dead, I think you owe me an explanation,” Rose continues, ignoring Eveline’s pitiful attempt at fixing her vocabulary. It’s too late for that. She was raised amongst soldiers.
Her diner looks downright pathetic, and she only has herself to blame for that. She sights and tries to salvage the disaster with a bit of paprika.
Too much of paprika. Shit.
“You already know everything,” Eveline says dully, putting the doll next to her.
Rose looks at Karl, who smiles and tips his hat.
“And you’re okay with that? You? Mister If I don’t insult my sister every five minutes assume I’m dead?” She adds a bit of curry to the sauce, because at this point, why not.
“Oh, I was really mad, but not for long,” Karl assures.
“At least two months,” Eveline mumbles.
“If anything, death has given me a new perspective on life. I don’t have the time to hold petty, useless grudges. And since Miranda is not here to order us around and pit us against each others, it’s way easier to ignore Alcina.” Karl smiles like she’s supposed to clap and give him a medal.
But he called her Alcina. That’s new.
“Fine,” Rose mutters, looking at her small collection of spices for something to save her failed attempt at cooking diner. “Are you going to bring back Moreau then?”
Silence. She turns around. Eveline looks guilty, and Karl is trying to smother his laugh.
“You didn’t,” she says, pointing accusingly with her spoon. “Tell me you didn’t!”
Eveline’s grimace is an answer in itself. Rose whines.
“I felt bad for him!” Eveline explains, ignoring Karl’s snickers. “I revived all the Lords, except him.”
“Yeah, for a good reason.” Karl’s grin has a mean edge to it. “He was the worse of us. Way too much into the whole family bullshit. Even dear Alcina thought he was infuriating.”
He doesn’t sound that put upon by the resurrection though. More like morbidly amused. Whatever went down in the Realm of Bullshit, he enjoyed it greatly.
Karl thrives on chaos, Rose remembers grimly.
“He cried so much when we told him Miranda finally kicked the bucket. He kept asking what was the point of his existence. Told him he needed a hobby,” Karl says with a careless shrug.
Eveline throws him a look, and he tilts his head in acknowledgement.
“Helped him find a hobby,” he adds, and Rose almost laughs, imagining Karl Heisenberg trying to knit with his least favourite sibling.
“Your diner is burning, Rose,” Eveline notes, and Rose whirls toward the stove. Her pitiful attempt at a sauce is, indeed, burning.
Once the pan is soaking in the sink and the smell of smoke has gone through the open window, Rose sights.
“Want to order pizza?” She suggests.
She gets two enthusiastic nods at that, and Eveline leans back to grab her phone. She hands it to Rose, then, after glancing at the screen, frowns and brings it back to her face.
“Who’s Toni?” she asks, with all the haughty authority a ten years old can muster.
Karl lifts his eyebrows and looks at Rose, who bites her lips and tries to come up with a good lie.
“Nobody,” she says. “Just a friend.”
“Why is there a little heart next to his name?” Eveline is scrolling on her phone, probably reading her conversation with Toni, and nope, not happening, not today.
Rose flicks her fingers and her phone crystallizes in Eveline’s hands, the screen now unreadable.
“Just a friend, huh,” Karl repeats, his grin predatory. “My, my, Rosie, what are you hiding?”
“Nothing”. She steps in front of Eveline and wrestles her phone back. She makes the crystal disappear and looks at Toni’s message. Nothing too incriminating, thankfully. Just a confirmation for their date tomorrow. “You want pizza or what?”
“Of course. But I would like to learn more about this Toni fellow,” Karl drawls, hands on his hips.
“Toni is a girl,” Rose mutters, scrolling through the app to find the pizza place she likes the most. “We met a month ago in a bar. Nothing has happened. We’re just friends. Forget about it.”
She stares at them very hard, daring them to say something, anything. Karl is just smiling, looking deeply pleased with himself, as usual. He’s probably wracking his brain for a good joke. Eveline just pouts.
“But why the heart?” she asks, and Rose has to take a big breath and reminds herself than Eveline was raised in a lab.
“Well, you see, kid, when two people really like each other...” Karl starts in a sing-song voice, and Rose hurls his spoon at his head. He catches it with his power, teeth glinting in the light.
“Don’t. Say. A. Word” she grits out. “Or no pizza for you.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Rosie,” Karl sights, and sits on the couch next to Eveline, patting her head fondly.
Rose orders the pizza.
“Does your father know?” Karl asks, once they are done eating, and Rose is trying to scrape the burned pieces of her pan.
“About what?” She throws him a quick glance for the corner of her eyes. He seems sincerely curious, but Rose has learned he can be a pretty good actor when he wants it.
“About you, taking your first steps on the dating scene.”
“Karl. I dated a girl for almost a year. We broke up six months ago because of schedules conflicts. I’m not a baby anymore.”
Karl gasps, one hand on his heart. “And you didn’t tell me! Rosie, I’m gutted, truly.”
“I didn’t tell you because I thought you would be very annoying about it,” she states, rinsing the pan. “And I was right! So, shut up. Don’t say a word to my father.”
Karl smiles, and it’s one of his rare genuine one.
“I won’t say anything,” he promises.
Rose nods, and that’s the end of it.
She’s in one of the facilities where they keep the “cooperative” bio-weapons when she meets Salvatore Moreau.
She’s not doing anything special. She likes to drop by sometimes to check on Tentacle Monster, rebaptized Ziegler by the head biologist of the facility, a very sharp and weird woman who goes by Doctor O'Deorain.
“I named them after my ex-girlfriend,” O’Deorain explains idly, a tablet in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. “Not that she was a monster, mind you. Very nice gal, we parted on very good terms.”
They are walking toward the gigantic water tank Ziegler occupies. The room is almost empty, most of the biologists went to get lunch. Rose prefers it that way, she doesn’t like the stares that follow her when she gets too close to the tank and says hi to her tentacles-wielding friend.
“But she was deeply fascinated by tentacles. Very strange, I never understood the appeal,” O’Deorain muses, and Rose tries desperately to keep a straight face.
That’s what she gets for being a nice, friendly bio-weapon. Very intimate details about people’s personal lives. She nods, like it’s nothing, and clears her throat.
“And how is, huh, Ziegler doing?” She asks, and now, every time she’s going to think about Tentacle Monster, her mind is going to supply her with an unknown woman with a very particular interest.
“Oh, very good, Miss Winters. Way better than we expected, to be honest. There were some little hiccups when they arrived, with the tank’s temperature and whatnots, but I do believe they are very happy with their new home.”
They stop a few feet away from the tank. Ziegler (don’t think about the tentacles, don’t think about the tentacles) drifts in the water, their numerous eyes half-closed.
“We even put a few decorations, for enrichment,” O’Deorain adds with a satisfied smile, pointing at a fake treasure chest sitting at the bottom of the tank, half-hidden behind some plants.
Rose nods, reassured. She knew Ziegler was in good hands, Chris has personally vouched for Doctor O’Deorain’s integrity, and assured her she was the perfect woman for the job. Her and her team of marine biologists were delighted to meet Ziegler and study him.
So far, nobody has tried to harm Ziegler. They seem healthier than before, red skin vibrant and whole.
“We think Ziegler’s intelligence is comparable to one of an octopus. They can recognize faces, and react to positive reinforcement. They haven’t tried to eat anyone in months.” O’Deorain sounds very proud, like Ziegler is her special little baby.
It’s nice, to be honest. If only everyone was that understanding of bio-weapons, Rose would be out of a job in no time.
“Well, I have a meeting I need to attend, but stay as much as you want, Miss Winters.” O’Deorain gives her a polite nod that Rose returns, and leaves the room.
It’s quiet. Ziegler ignores her, probably because she’s not a threat anymore. It’s true that they seem content with the situation. The tank is big enough for them, and Rose can see a few tentacles playing with the lid of the treasure chest.
She sits with her back against the tank, the soft glow of the underwater lamps soothing her. She needed this, needed the break. A week ago, Chris personally came to her apartment. He even brought beers, which was kind of hilarious. The man had helped her learn her multiplication tables, and now they were sitting on her shitty couch drinking beers and trying to fill the awkward silences.
“They want us to make it official,” Chris finally grunted, looking at the painting she had hung on the wall, a memory from her relationship with Charlie. “They don’t like you not having some kind of contract.”
“But I have one, right?” She tried to remember if she had signed something important in the past few years, but nothing came up. “I mean, you pay me.”
“Technically you’re here as a consultant,” Chris said, stressing the word meaningfully. “My authority over you is limited..”
He was trying to warn her, and she could feel the walls closing in, the already too-tight cage she had been born into shrinking into nothing. The beer suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
“I told them to fuck off,” Chris assured her, trying to smile. “I won’t make you sign anything you’re not ready for.”
The contract probably came with benefits, she was sure of it. But she also knew they would insist on monitoring her. Maybe put a chip somewhere in her body, so they could see where she was at any moment. Force her to live in a facility, and not in her own apartment. Monthly check-ups turning daily. Her life in a cage, and no escape.
A strong swampy smell hits her nose and she whips her head up. Someone is standing not far away from her, a hunched, twisted silhouette covered in rags.
It’s Moreau. Karl’s description of his brother was pretty on point, if a bit mean. Sure, Moreau looks... monstrous, there is no other word, but Rose has seen way worse.
He’s looking at her with a great deal of confusion, hands twisting in front of him, his eyes flickering between her face and the tank behind her.
Rose smiles and waves.
“Hi. I’m Rose,” she says, and he takes a step backward, looking suddenly very frightened. Like he’s afraid she’s going to think he wants to attack her. “You must be Moreau. Nice to meet you.”
She keeps her voice light and pleasant, her smile unwavering. Moreau blinks twice, then shuffles a bit closer, still keeping some distance between them.
“They warned me...” Moreau says, and his voice is very different from what she expected. It’s a pretty normal voice, a bit higher pitched than she thought, and very subdued. He sounds shy. “They warned me about this. But Heisenberg said there was no reason for you to call me. We don’t know each other, after all.”
He laughs a bit, his tentative smile a bit self-depreciative, like it’s his own moral failure for not meeting her before. It’s very strange.
“Yes, but well, I think I still don’t really understand how these... calls work, so. Here you are,” Rose says, standing up. She’s taller than Moreau. “Sorry for the inconvenience. Hope you weren’t doing anything important.”
“Oh, not at all, not at all!” He assures with small, nervous gestures, his eyes going wide and panicked. “I’m very happy to serve... to meet you.”
She shivers at the word. Serve. She looks at him in a new light, wondering why Karl and Eveline didn’t tell her about that.
Does he think she’s the new Miranda? That she called him to do her biding? Does he want her to be the new Miranda, so he could have a new purpose in life?
She thinks about Eveline’s amused sneer, “you could bring us back”, the price she’s not ready, not willing to pay, and the whispered comparisons behind her back, where they think she can’t hear them. She knows Chris tries to hide it from her, but there are some people who think she’s going to break one day, and try to create her own little fungus dystopia somewhere in the world.
And deep down, there is a little voice saying it would be so easy. To just give in and bend the mold to her will and raise people back from the grave, to force her enemies to like her by taking over their thoughts, to expand and conquer and just take until there is nothing else, and Chris has to put a bullet between her eyes.
Moreau’s tentative smile drops, and he steps back. She stayed silent for too long, he probably thinks she’s angry with him.
“I will go, I don’t...” he mumbles, looking around, his eyes fractioning a bit when they fall on the room. “Where are we?”
Rose smiles and gestures at Ziegler, who has stopped to look at them with curious eyes.
“In the home of my great pal, Ziegler. Say hi, buddy.”
Ziegler slowly raises a tentacle, and waves. After a small pause, Moreau shyly waves back.
“Ziegler was created by a mad scientist called Fizzwizzle,” she explains, rocking a bit on the balls of her feet. “They were supposed to act as a guard dog, but honestly, they weren’t very good at this.” Ziegler’s tentacle slaps against the glass, and she smiles. “Yeah, buddy, don’t try to deny it. One stern look from Alcina and you decided it wasn’t the job for you.”
Moreau’s mouth hangs half-open.
“I try to visit every now and then. Just to check on them, see if they’re doing okay. The doctor says they are happy here, so.” She shrugs.
It works, maybe. Moreau has relaxed, and he’s looking at Ziegler with a contemplative look. Rose remembers what her dad told her about him – he lived in a reservoir, and could turn into a big, lumpy fish. He was a doctor, once upon a time, before Miranda’s experimentation fucked him up, and the magemycete completely turned his priorities toward his new mommy.
She almost feels bad for him, in a way. The four Lords were both victims and executioners, and she has read stuff on the cycle of violence, stuff that could help her with out-of-control bio weapons and the like. She knows Donna just wanted to be left alone and only tortured people who dared to break into her domain, but that doesn’t explain why the dollmaker was perfectly content with letting Miranda lock Rose into jars to revive her dead daughter.
It’s complicated. Things are never all black or all white, Chris has told her years ago, when they were talking about her first mission. She had been so nervous, so worried about losing control and killing everyone, but Chris wasn’t worried about that.
He was worried about her losing her humanity. Losing the carefully cultivated care for human life, losing herself and letting her powers take control. He was worried about her turning into... a monster, a real one, one who didn’t care about other people, who could justify every action with the end justifies the means.
So she invites Moreau to step a bit closer with one hand and an encouraging smile, and Moreau obeys, shuffling to stand next to her, nose almost glued to the tank.
“What a beauty,” he murmurs, eyes roaming across Ziegler’s form.
Rose supposes he’s right, in a way. There is something truly fascinating about monsters.
When O’Deorain comes back from her meeting, Rose is alone. Moreau has excused himself in a timid voice, not looking at her, and she hasn’t tried to make him stay.
He will come around, eventually.
“Rosie, sweetheart, honey, light of your father’s life, what the fuck are you doing?”
Rose blinks, trying to get rid of the fog covering her vision. Her head is heavy, a headache pulsing at her temples, and she can’t feel her legs, or her fingers.
She should be panicking, but she just wants to go to sleep. Her eyes are closing despite her best efforts at keeping them open.
Something slaps her, the pain momentarily bringing the world back into focus. Karl’s face, close to her. She can almost see his eyes through the glasses’ lenses. Despite his light-hearted tone, he looks concerned.
“Come on, Rosemary Winters. Pull yourself together.”
She fights back a groan. Everything hurts. She just wants to sleep and let the world deal with whatever is going on without her. She can do that, right? The universe isn’t going to explode once she stops watching over it.
“Back off,” she mumbles, her tongue feeling too big for her mouth. “Sleepy.”
“Fuck.” She hears Karl curses in Romanian as he steps back. She closes her eyes, sighting in relief. Karl can do what he wants, she’s going back to sleep. She feels something on her wrist, long cold fingers checking her pulse. A swampy smell hits her nose and she frowns, trying to place it.
“A bit slow,” a vaguely familiar voice murmurs, and she squints, slowly turns her head, feeling the muscle in her neck protest. Moreau is standing on her right. He’s the one checking her pulse; when he meets her eyes, he smiles nervously.
“What the fuck did they do to you,” Karl mutters, doing something on her left, sounding very angry all of the sudden. “What did they give you? And who did that? BSAA?”
She struggles to keep her eyes open, her mind going a bit hazy with the question. Give her? What does...
“Some kind of sedative,” Moreau mutters, stepping back when Karl puts his hand on her right side.
Something clinks, and she looks down. Her wrists have been tied to the table. Right. Metal table with fastenings straight up from a horror movie. Karl is destroying the bonds with his power, metal crumbling and falling to the floor.
He puts his hands on her shoulders and forces her to sit up. She weakly tries to push him away.
“Five more minutes,” she whines, and she hears him breath out a laugh.
“Sorry, Rosie, but you need to wake up now.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“Afraid that’s not a suggestion.”
He takes her face between his hands, peering into her eyes. She blinks. His hands, covered in leather gloves, are warm. It’s very nice.
“They drugged you, Rose,” he says, voice low and serious. “You need to leave before they come back.”
“The effects of the anaesthetic are probably going to pass very soon,” Moreau adds rather helpfully from somewhere behind Karl. “Your body is well-equipped to deal with these pesky drugs.”
She tries to say something, but everything is going so slow, her thoughts muddled and useless. She can’t remember anything. Why is she here?
“Come on,” Karl huffs, helping her down the table. The room is very grey, and the walls are spinning. Rose clings to Karl’s coat.
“I’m going to throw up,” she warns, and Karl immediately spins her so she doesn’t barf all over his shoes. She hears Moreau hisses, maybe in sympathy, maybe in disgust.
The bile burns her throat and makes her eyes water, but strangely it helps. She feels a bit better, in a way.
“There was a... situation,” she mumbles, and Karl puts his arm around her and drags her toward the door, Moreau trailing behind them, nervously fiddling with his hands. “Was going great, but then, someone put a needle in me.”
It’s hard to explain, and she feels a sudden surge of frustration. Words don’t come out like she wants them to, and she can feel, distantly, Karl’s amusement.
“And then bam. You. Here. Can I go back to sleep?” she asks as Karl uses his power to open the door. The metal groans and bend easily. When they step out of the room, the keypad sparks, and the lights in the hallway flickers.
There are two bodies lying on the floor, their faces obscured by a thick layer of black mold. Rose doesn’t have the time to reflect on this, because Karl is gently stirring her toward what she hopes is the exit. Or a comfy bed.
Karl looks at Moreau, and makes a small gesture with his free hand. Moreau nods, and starts walking fast down the hallway, his hunched silhouette quickly blurring in the distance.
“Not yet. Hang in here,” Karl promises, and she tries to nod. Her head lolls against Karl’s shoulder and she hears him sight. They are walking at a snail-pace.
“Honestly, Rosie, why do you always end up in situation like this?”
“Don’t know.” Karl is short-circuiting the cameras as they go. “I don’t want to, I swear.”
Karl hums. There is a soft sound near Rose, and she feels a small, clammy hand slips into her own.
“When you go looking for trouble, you will usually find it,” Eveline says in her creepy sing-song voice.
“Thanks, fortune cookie,” Rose manages to say, and Karl snorts. She forces her eyes to look down, and meets Eveline’s unamused glare.
“What are you doing here, kid? I’ve got this under control,” Karl asks, slowing down to also look at Eveline.
Eveline ignores him. Rose weakly squeezes her hand in thanks. Karl could have probably gotten her out of this place with minimal damages, but still. It’s nice to feel loved.
Above them, a security alarm starts blaring, lights going red, making her head hurts a hundred time more. She winces and stumbles, Karl’s arm the only thing keeping her upright.
“Oh, now they’re spoiling my fun,” Karl murmurs, and he lifts his hand, fingers pulling at the air for a second or two, and the alarm abruptly stops. The hallway goes dark for a second, then the emergency lights kicks in, a sickly greenish hue illuminating the floor. She hears Eveline laugh.
There is another door, thick and heavy-looking, and behind it, Rose can hear people scream.
“Party’s almost over,” Karl says with a sight, and he opens the door.
It looks like a monitoring room, a bit hard to confirm with the dimmed lighting. But Rose can see the bodies littering the floor, the crushed furniture; she can smell fresh blood and an almost acidic, pungent stench. In the middle of the room, standing a bit hunched because of the unfortunate low ceiling, Alcina is wiping her elongated claws on a piece of fabric. Her white dress is splattered with blood.
Moreau is standing next to her, and in the emergency lights, he looks oddly proud of himself. There is a body at his feet, covered in a strange, yellowish liquid, the skin burned and blistered.
“Good, you retrieved her,” Alcina says, nodding at them. She lifts one brow in Karl’s direction. “You are not that useless after all, dear brother. How are you feeling, my dear?”
Rose looks around. She wants to throw up again. Karl mutters something about an oversized ass and ego.
“Better,” she whispers. Eveline hums, and toes a body near her with her boot. She giggles.
“I’m going to stay here, help them clean up,” she declares, and her hand slips from Rose’s. She skips toward Alcina, and the giant lady leans to pat her head with a fond smile.
“Have fun, kid. Don’t make any stain on your dress or Donna will be mad,” Karl shouts at her. Eveline just waves at them like a child going on a fieldtrip. Moreau also waves, and slips past a doorway, followed by Alcina and Eveline, who appear to be making a bet about how much people they can kill in one strike.
“Let’s go,” Karl mutters, dragging her, their shoes stepping in the blood puddles. Rose hears the squelching sound her soles makes, and grits her teeth, fighting back the nausea. It’s okay. They kidnapped her. They drugged her. They were probably planning to do horrible things to her.
They reach an elevator on the other side of the room. Everything is dreadfully quiet.
“Where are we going?” Rose asks, as Karl waves his hand around and closes the doors behind them. Another gesture and the elevator starts to rise.
“Outside, hopefully,” Karl says, letting her lean against the wall. “So, remember anything useful yet?”
Rose rubs her eyes, trying to force herself to just feel better. The headache is still here, unfortunately, but the fog has thankfully receded, and her stomach is settling.
Honestly, she just feels like she has a hangover.
“A situation, I told you,” she mutters. “Some assholes selling bio-weapons parts.”
Karl makes a disgusted face. “And people buy that?”
“Yeah, sure. They use the parts to make more bio-weapons.”
It’s all coming back to her, she realizes with a relieved sight.
“And they kidnapped you,” Karl guesses. The elevator is still going, and sometimes, Rose can hear panicked shouts behind the closed doors as they pass another floor. The two other Lords and Eveline are probably having a great time out here. Karl is most likely powering the elevator all by himself, bypassing whatever security measures this place has.
“Yes. Don’t know what they injected me with, but I was out in seconds.” She remembers, the bone-deep panic when her fingers had touched the thin needle sticking out from her left arm. The cold, seeping through her veins like poison, the world blurring and Chris’s voice, very far away, in her earpiece, asking her for her position.
“So, it was a trap. They knew you would be coming. They wanted to catch you,” Karl muses, rubbing his chin. He throws her a glance, peering from behind her glasses. “You’re making a name for yourself, Rosie.”
Yeah, and she doesn’t like it.
She would very much prefer to be anonymous, for nobody to know who she is, what she can do, but it doesn’t work like that. Chris has warned her, multiple times, that this wasn’t something she could do without consequences.
“People talk. You will attract unwanted attention, and it’s not gonna be pleasant.” He had said that, and in the same breath asked if she could help him deal with two twins on mushroom steroids wrecking havoc in a small German town.
He was trying, at least.
“Don’t have a choice,” she whispers, closing her eyes, feeling the rumbles of the elevator. “Never had one.”
Karl doesn’t say anything to that. Probably because there is nothing to say. Rose was doomed right from birth, the daughter of two people infected with a powerful, very instable mutated fungus. She never doubted her parents had loved her, but they were only two persons against the whole world.
She had always been a shiny tool people tried to get their hands on. Miranda was the first, but not the last, and it only went downhill from here. Chris is the nicest, truly, but Rose knows there is a part of him that’s relieved he’s the one who got his hands on her first. He probably doesn’t think about it that way, not in terms of control and ownership, but she still works with him, for him, instead of another organisation.
She’s almost twenty-three and she knows it’s not the last time she will end up in this situation.
“Sorry, Rosie,” Karl says, and she shrugs.
“It’s fine. At least I’m not alone.”
She smiles at him, and he looks surprised for a second or two before his usual smug grin takes over. Rose feels a light touch on her shoulder. She doesn’t have to turn her head to now that it’s Donna – she could recognize this mothball-floral-tea-dusty-attic smell everywhere.
Donna is not a fighter, not like the others are. She’s more comfortable in places she knows, where she had been able to spin her web of nightmares. It’s surprising that she’s even here, even if she had purposely missed the big fight.
“No, you are not,” Donna says in a soft voice. She’s wearing her veil, her voice slightly muffled by the fabric.
Rose closes her eyes for a moment, feeling a weird lump in her throat. This is such a shitty day.
The elevator stops.
“Feeling better?” Karl asks. She takes a deep breath, and looks down at her hands. White veins are forming here and there, and she can feel a slight pressure in her chest. She nods.
Karl adjusts his hat, and opens the doors.
Donna’s hand doesn’t leave Rose’s shoulder.
Later, Chris corners her in one of the break rooms of their main base of operation.
He doesn’t change much, Chris, despite the years. He only looks more and more tired as time passes, and sometimes Rose wonders why he does this job.
Why he feels the need to bear the weight of other people’s mistakes on his very large shoulders.
“You can still drop out,” Chris says, handing her a cup of coffee.
She feels fine. No headache, no nausea. The doctor checked her out, as much as he could with all the bio-weapon business going on in her body, and declared her in perfect health. He asked for a blood test, to see what kind of drugs they used to knock her out.
Just so they know what works against her.
Rose tries to tell herself she doesn’t mind, but there is a small voice in her head asking why they want to know that, and if they are going to use this knowledge against her one day.
If she goes crazy and tries to blow up a town, if she starts infecting people with mold and turning them in zombies, if she joins forces with another rampaging mutant.
“You know I can’t,” she says, and Chris looks at her, eyes narrowed. “It’s too late. The world knows I’m here.” She tries to smile, to tell him that it’s okay. “All I can do is not let them catch me.”
“Don’t be pessimistic. It doesn’t suit you.”
She tilts her head, pondering the words. Is this how Chris sees her? An optimistic, naïve girl? Because she wants to help the other freaks, and tries to do minimal damages when she has to fight?
“It’s not…” Chris starts, then breathes out a deep sight, and sits on the couch with her. “We did a sweep of the facility after you got out. Just to check on what they had, what they knew. And…”
He throws her a concerned look.
“It was a blood fest down here. Not your usual style.”
Oh. That’s why he’s worried.
She doesn’t know if she can tell him. She trusts him as much as she can trust someone who practically raised her, but she doesn’t want the word to spread.
Rosemary Winters can bring people back from the dead.
Chris looks at her, and she takes a sip of coffee, wondering what she can say to appease him.
“They drugged me, to keep me compliant,” she starts. “I woke up and everything was… very confusing. I think I used my powers to break out of the room they kept me in. Must have, since I managed to get into the hallway.”
She realizes she’s not even lying, just not telling how, exactly, she has used her powers.
Telling Chris that the Four Lords of Mother Miranda and Eveline the scourge of Louisiana, who all very much died more than twenty years ago, have helped her, is way too complicated. She’s very glad Karl has shut down the security cameras on their way out.
“I didn’t control it,” she confesses, mumbling a bit. “I was panicking and they were shooting at me.”
“And you were drugged,” Chris adds, somewhat sympathetic. “Probably didn’t help.”
She nods. Let him think that, she decides. Let him think that your powers took control for a brief moment, and you murdered a bunch of people in blind panic.
Chris looks down, obviously trying to think about something to say, then he awkwardly pats her shoulder, and get up.
“Take a break, Rose.”
She smiles and says yes.
When she comes back to her apartment, she feels strangely hollowed out. She doesn’t feel home, it’s too quiet, too empty. It smells like the peach-scented candle she bought a week ago, when she went to the farmer’s market with Toni. The woman selling the candles was very nice, and her eyes crinkled in delight when Rose had started smelling the different candles, trying to find the one that would make her feel at ease.
She crawls in her bed, burrows herself deep under the cover, and tries to think of nothing at all.
Maybe someone told her dad about it. Maybe Karl slipped up and blurted out the truth, maybe Eveline made one snide comment that didn’t go unnoticed. Maybe Alcina thought he already knew, maybe Donna wanted to give him some advice, maybe Moreau made a reference he didn’t realize was damning.
But the next time, the next time her powers decide it’s time she needs a hand to deal with the mess she accidentally created, it’s her dad who appears right next to her.
He looks the same as ever, and Rose briefly thinks about the fact that one day, if she survives whatever bullshit life likes to throw at her, she will be older than he ever was.
He looks around, the small lab with dimmed lights, jars full of body parts on the shelves, a powered down computer on the desk, files neatly arranged on one side.
He looks at her.
“Rose,” he says, and that’s it. He stays silent, looking crushed, his hands hanging limply at his side. He’s wearing a gun, strapped to his side. He has a knife too, on his belt. Ready for battle, like the others.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. She’s holding a file in her hands. There is a dead body near the door, someone she didn’t want to kill but shot first. “I’m sorry, dad. I didn’t have a choice.”
Comprehension dawns on her dad’s face, and his mouth flattens. He makes an aborted gesture to take her in his arms, but thinks better of it.
“I wish you had one.” His voice sounds very fragile, in the quiet room.
“I need to get out of here,” Rose says, avoiding his grief-stricken eyes. “Chris is waiting for me.”
The name makes her father jolt, and his brows furrows.
“You work for Chris.” It’s not a question, but she still nods, putting the file in her backpack. She can’t take much more, unfortunately, but it will do. She’s not part of the cleaning team, she’s just here to clear the way for them.
But this file, it’s hers now, and she doesn’t want them to have it. She trusts Chris but he’s not the only one who has access to their files; if there is a leak, just one…
She will need everything she can get her hands on if she wants to accomplish her carefully laid plan. The one Chris reviewed in secret and approved.
Her dad doesn’t say anything. His eyes drift out toward the jars on the shelves, his shoulders tightening for a moment.
“Bio-weapon parts,” Rose supplies, shouldering her backpack. “We’re investigating a bio-terrorist organization. This is one of their safe house. We are going to blow up the place as soon as I’m out.”
And as soon as the cleaning team is done sweeping up the place, searching for clues on the whereabouts of this particular group. They are well-organized, they have resources, and it’s driving Chris crazy, how they manage to conduct their business despite having Rose on their heels.
There were only three people in the building. Two had immediately dropped their gun when they saw her. The other one has tried to shot her, and now he was dead. The bulk of the people working here must have been warned and evacuated.
How, Rose doesn’t know, and she bets Chris is already looking for the mole in their team.
“How long?” Her dad asks once they are out of the room. The warehouse is not really big, and almost empty. Their footsteps echo loudly on the concrete floor.
“Six years, give or take,” Rose says, suddenly shocked to realize it’s already been this long.
Her father stops, and she walks a few steps before realizing it. She turns toward him.
“You’ve been doing this for six years?” He doesn’t sound mad, which is great, because Rose is a bit too old to be lectured. She nods, inwardly wincing. She’s been eluding the truth for six years. She’s been lying, telling him she was working in a bookstore or in a coffee shop, living a normal life.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She wants to start walking again, imagining Chris getting impatient outside, and storming the place just to see her having a little chat with her dead dad.
“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she whispers, looking down, not wanting to see his face. “You wanted me to have a normal life. I didn’t make it.”
She can see his shoes getting closer, feels him put his hands on her arms.
“Rose, look at me,” he asks, and he still doesn’t sound mad. She lifts her head. He’s looking at her like…
Like he loves her very much, and doesn’t know how to say it.
“I wanted you to live, full stop. I’ve never had… plans for your future. I just wanted you to be happy and safe,” he says, in a low voice. “Sure, you running around getting in life-threatening situations on a daily basis is not exactly what I had in mind but…”
“I never had a choice,” Rose repeats, feeling a tad hysterical.
“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He takes her in his arms, tucking her head under his chin. He’s warm, and she clings to his back with all her strength. She missed this. She missed him so much. She wishes he had been here all the time.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and she feels her eyes sting. Why is he apologizing? “I should have been here. I should have been here for you.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbles into his jacket, the one that looks so much like the one she’s wearing. “I’m okay.”
He keeps hugging her until the tears have receded and she can breathe again. Then, he gently pushes her away, peers into her eyes and smiles.
“I just want you to be happy,” he says. “Are you?”
“Happy? Sometimes.”
He nods, and very nicely tucks her hair behind her ears, smoothing down the strands that have escaped from her bun.
“Good enough. But Rose, please.” He looks almost pleading. “Don’t cut me out. I want to help too.”
She bites her lips, wonder how he would have reacted in Karl’s place, when she was drugged and tied down to a metallic table.
“If you can let Dimistrecu helps you, why not me?” He’s trying to joke, but it’s obvious he’s not taking it well.
“It only happened…” She has to rapidly count in her head, and winces. “Okay, four times. With Alcina.”
He gives her a disappointed look.
“Don’t even get me started on Karl.”
Rose lifts a brow.
“Oh, it’s Karl now?”
“We bonded over the Transformers movies.”
She can help her laugh, and it’s worth it just to see her dad relaxes and smiles.
“I didn’t want you to freak out,” she says, and they start walking again, albeit slower than before. “Sometimes it gets a bit messy.” Her dad looks very concerned. “Not for me! Usually I don’t even have a scratch on me at the end of the day. It’s just…” She waves a hand in the air, trying to convey the general gist of the kind of mess she gets into.
She doesn’t know how to tell him that she signed the contract a few months ago. Chris had drafted it himself, just to be sure it would be in her best interests. She read it again and again, trying the find the loopholes, the parts people could exploit, the sentences that could condemn her to a life in captivity. Chris was here, watching her read, explaining the legal lingo in a patient voice.
She signed it. She was no longer a consultant. Chris could give her orders, and the only way she could say no was to break the contract. There was a clause, somewhere in the eight pages, about that. Chris was very clear about the fact that breaking the contract wouldn’t be appreciated by the higher-ups. His face told her than he didn’t really care about what people in expansive suits thought about them.
But she can’t pick and chose the missions anymore. She has to be here, all the time, no matter what. Her apartment has been empty for two months now, and she hasn’t tried to go on a date for even longer. She thinks about the vegetables rotting away in her fridge.
She thinks about the government official taking the contract and putting it away in a black folder with a satisfied smile.
She thinks about her plan. About a fake death and freedom. About Chris going rogue for the hundred times in his life, because his distrust for governmental organizations is not really a secret. She thinks about making her own way into the world, and trying to build herself a home.
“Rose, I’m very familiar with messy situations,” her dad points out, fighting back a smile. “Did Chris ever tell you what really happened in Louisiana? Or in the village?”
She shakes her head.
“He gave me a few details, but nothing too precise.”
“Yeah, I figured as much. I should probably tell you one day.”
Rose stops in front of the door. He has to go back, Chris can’t see him.
“You can tell me, tomorrow night?” She offers, and his smile could light up an entire city.
“I would love that, Rose.”
When he hugs her, squeezing her tight like he’s scared she will push him away, she tries to tell herself that everything will be okay.