Legacy to Zero

Interlude - Wire

Crash

Even though shattering a bed frame and toppling a building should have bothered me, it didn't.

And for a few weeks, I kept it out of my head. Attended the Tetra's meetings with the council, listening to Grant or Emiya going on about nothing. Watched TV with Astra about people—not sorcerers—from places I'd never heard of, places that may as well have been beyond the sun. Ate in the meeting room-kitchen, keeping a tally of each member's missions.

Astra had the most, not that I could count hers if I tried. Followed by her was Kendra, who'd recruited three sorcerers to Prismatrix, stopped a trio of up-and-coming villains from taking over a city street, then helped rebuild what they'd broken. Sage had been too busy babysitting me to accomplish much, but he was currently working on a mission, at least. Unlike me.

It had always been a mystery to me why the oldest forming Tetra member wasn't its leader, but I didn't think Sage minded. If I had to guess, he liked it better when he wasn't tasked with making the decisions.

He paced the kitchen, going in little circles around the table. Years ago, as a birthday gift, Astra had bought him an outer-city gadget she called a whiteboard, and he'd been dragging it around ever since.

The marker squeaked as he drew a forked line. The smell of it—a wave like the tang that hit me outside of a gas station—always gave me a headache.

"You wanna help me figure this out?"

His voice came in soft, far away, and I stirred my spoon around my cereal. In the metal reflection, shadows spotted. It was weightless in my hand, my numb fingers making pincers around it, and it tilted perpendicular, like the back of my chair did, just before I hit the floor.

"You're not talking to me," I said when I glanced up.

He spun the marker in his hands, while the other sank into the overturned pocket of his multicoloured, striped coat. He gave me a half smile. "Of course I am," he replied, his tone even. "The plants can't help me here." He pointed the marker at the windowsill, where some of his potted plants had made their homes. In response, the leaves unfurled. The cactus in the smear of sunlight stood straighter.

I shrugged. His whiteboard drawings just looked like thorns to me, assembled in parallel rows. "What are you even working on?"

"That's a river!" He tapped the marker against the edge. "See, I put some ripples here. It's supposed to be flowing."

I didn't see anything close to that. "The Rift?" I asked. It was the only body of water I could think of.

"Yes! I knew my drawing wasn't that bad."

My watch buzzed—this time it was actually mine—I'd left Kendra's jewelry box alone. I stuck the spoon in my mouth and squinted at it. My initials flashed along with Aeris and Sage, and I almost choked on the spoon.

I got a mission?

"What is it this time?" Sage said, still facing the whiteboard like it was the most casual occurrence in the universe. I supposed for him it was. "Anything interesting?"

I reached for the spoon, got it out of my mouth, which hung open and didn't seem to want to let the words free. "A scouting mission from the council," I relayed at last. "Aeris, Sage—"