Sovereign

Addendum.

I embraced it and took my little joys in watching him grow from the troubled teenager he was and flower into the thoughtful, self-aware person he became, and I worried when he came back home to the Esoterica, and Mosadiel. He knew little of his time here, and the strength of the nex connections he had formed with Crystal terrified me. I told Mosadiel. He told me, they would have found each other even if I hid him away on the moon. Such was the strength of Crystal’s pathology. Her father was a gifted with chaos, she would seek her own destruction and flirt with it.

Each mission they went on filled me with dread. In the beginning Henry always insisted I be the annexing medium. I was familiar with his mind. Too familiar. I caught myself too many times, trying to tamper with his bond with Crystal. So I hoisted him on to Maghreb. Who was all too eager to accept. For someone who had spent millennia studying human behaviour, I couldn’t blatantly see what should have been obvious; a thing entirely otherworldly trying to pass off emotions as human.

At what point did Maghreb turn?

I wish I could pinpoint it. She is a creature as old as I am. Older if you consider that she had existed as the desert winds long before she became sentient and gathered to herself a body. I have been on so many sides that my time in the Esoterica feels more like a job than picking a side, good or evil. I suspect Maghreb felt that way. Promeno has dabbled in many pantheons, leeching worship. Even if she didn’t work for him before now, I’m certain she must have known him. Torn from her once vast kingdom and turned into a remote viewer was probably not how she wanted to spend any part of her godhood, but she did for nearly five years and betrayed us.

I've managed to ramble again. But such is the nature of my curse. An abundance of knowledge oft makes one lose focus. I should be cleaning, I know.

M’s vision is more acute than mine and he notices things I’d normally miss. When he begins to squeak atop my head, I actually open my eyes, activating the passive nex that connects his optical nerves to the dead ones in the back of my head. The world lights up, then darkens to adjust to the ultraviolet light which his tiny ones pick up. I realise then that the bulbs in the lobby have blown out and I must have been working in the darkness. I lift the small pile of concrete boulders that block my path. Underneath it, in tatters is what is left of a burgundy pea coat; the pockets empty and the collar crumpled. I pick it up, listening to M’s wild squeaking. I can imagine its silver fur bristling as I feel the surface of the coat though my vision is currently beyond human capacity; a reflex from a millennium of blindness. The texture reminds me instantly of where I’d felt it before, Maghreb just before she went for a smoke during lunch break every afternoon.

My fingers rove to the buttons. The coat is bulky and it has toggles for buttons except for the second button from the top which is a beautiful beady black eye set in grey pearl. It seems off, sitting there surrounded by toggles. Maghreb is normally impeccably dressed, even when she’s trying to be shabby. Then I spot it, the tiny plastic concentric circles vibrating inside the fish eye concave plastic face. It is something every deity comes to recognize with a sense of defeat. I know in ten seconds the plastic will shudder into a thousand tiny pieces if I don’t act fast. It’s something I have practiced many times in the secret of my car and I try it now, forcing all my will into forcing my body to shift subtly. My skin loses its sheen, my eyes their shine. In five seconds I am unremarkable; a woman you would pass by on the street and not notice. I mastered this nearly a decade ago tracking down a fugitive wind sprite in Britain, a glamour that I have refused to share even with Mosadiel because of how dangerous it could become in the hands of the beings around which my life revolves. Like the humans who created them, electronic devices can fooled into believing that things are not what they seem.

The well-disguised camera stops to shudder in its amber home and I sigh in relief. I flip the coat over; careful to keep my hands steady and feel the underside of the coat. There is a small wire attached to a tiny box. I feel the sides and stop when I reach an indentation. There is something wedged in and I press. It flicks out and I pull it out between fore and middle finger, discarding the coat. It’s a tiny black rectangle; a memory card.

I shut down my peripheral sensations, withdrawing into myself. For a second I long to reconnect to the Bunker and the many forgotten nexes embedded within its very walls. Then I shut off that feeling too. A memory card is more fragile than a camera, even the slightest errant whiff of the energy born of godhood will wipe it clean. I think of how long I have remembered Maghreb wearing that coat within the bunker and shake my head. Maghreb must have mastered her own version of electronic glamour long before I had to have the level of control to operate minute electronic equipment around so many beings and not have it go up in flames. I consider this as I fish in the pockets of my dungarees for the sleek black phone and hit redial on the first number. I put it to my ear, the ringing cuts off before it finishes a run.

“Magdalene.”

Mosadiel sounds weary. I feel almost bad to be the bearer of bad news.

“Moses, the bad days may have just gone worse. Magreb has given more to Promeno than we imagined. And I know how she did it.”

I have no further information beyond this, so for all intents and purposes, this is the end of the compilation. Agent Fischa says she would be working closely with the Esoteric operatives to keep me updated on any new developments. I assimilated all these documents for your benefit, because it is very important that you understand what is at stake here. I do not want to accept it either, but the implication of this last piece of evidence points to only one very frightening conclusion.

The early apocalypse is still a very real threat to our future, and our best bet of stopping it may have been compromised. It's up to us to be prepared for the worst case scenario. I trust you will do your best with this knowledge.

-E. A.