The W Concern

Nicole

Nicole leaned back against the sack of sugar on the floor and looked at her nails. There was blood caked underneath them. Maroon red. The colour of blood that was almost dry. She made a sound that was halfway between a click and a hiss. So annoying. She'd already washed her hands twice but blood had a way of getting everywhere.

She inhaled deeply, closed her eyes for a second.

She liked the smells in the bakery. Flour, sugar, butter, chocolate. Perhaps in another life she would have been a baker, would have worked in a place like this.

"What do you think, Amanda?" She said lazily, "Should we make this our new headquarters?"

"M'am?"

Without needing to open her eyes Nicole could picture Amanda standing stiffly, probably raising her hand to speak. She would never understand her, this woman who was so smart, but also so incredibly awkward. If she wasn't so loyal she would probably have ripped her throat out a long time ago.

"What, you don't like bakeries?" Nicole said. She peeled one eye open. Amanda was standing across from her, a dish rag in one hand, a bucket full of bloody water on the floor by her feet. She had been cleaning up the splatter on the wall. Someone else - that new kid, Xavier - had dragged the mangled mess of a body out back.

"No, uh, we got word."

Nicole sat up, opened both her eyes, rested her elbows on her knees. "Yeah?"

"Two more down."

"Good," Nicole said. Three more to go. It was going faster than she had thought it would but she was still tense, unable to relax till the work was done. She leaned back again.

"One more thing," Amanda said.

Nicole sighed. She need to rest, to recover. She'd cracked a rib in that last fight. Right before she sunk her teeth into that silverback's side he had rammed her into the counter, knocking off a mountain of cupcakes. The sound of bone cracking had come before the pain for Nicole, but when the pain came it blossomed outward, radiating all the way from under her arm to her hip. With every breath it sharpened to a knife point, dulled and then sharpened again. All she needed was a few hours of downtime and she'd be fine but time always passed slowly when she was injured. "What?" She said, trying to keep her voice even. Amanda always flinched if she got too cold or too hard with her.

"We heard back from the Oracle."

Nicole's mouth went dry. She swallowed with effort and then forced herself to feign disinterest, picking at the dried blood underneath her nails. "And?"

"It's him."

Nicole nodded. Right. She had thought so. When she had met his eyes in the comic book store it had felt strange, like she had always known him and would always know him. She had expected something a little more violent, like an electrical jolt but it had been a calm, deep realization, like peering into the depths of a cold lake and seeing something that was at once magical and natural. A glimmer of silver, the twist of a fish as it danced in the water.

"Well, two birds with one stone," Nicole said. "We'll take him in the morning."

"M'am?"

"Yes, Amanda."

"He's not going to just come with us. I don't think he's going to like the news."

"Of course he's not going to like the news. I don't like the news," Nicole said. "But he'll get over it, eventually." She stood up, flexing her fingers, watching as the nails on her fingers lengthened into claws and then retracted. That kind of control, that was what made her different from the other alphas. There was a beast inside of her, like there was with all of her kind, but she only let it out when she wanted to. It did not control her. Like everything in her world, it bent to her will.