Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

"He’s out of control now." Melissa stood in the middle of her office with the comms against her ear and the door shut behind her. The words left her mouth tighter than she’d planned. "He’s obsessed with ruling. Genuinely obsessed. And I think he’s going to become a serious obstacle to the awakening."

"We have larger things to think about, Lisa."

Monica’s voice came through with that particular ease she’d carried for years, the ease of a woman who had never once in her existence been the person in the room who needed something.

"He is a mortal. A freaking mortal." A laugh underneath it—soft, almost affectionate in its dismissal. "If he were an actual threat, he would not be breathing tonight. You understand that. You’ve watched me do it before."

Melissa crossed to her chair and sat down in it. The leather accepted her weight with a soft complaint. The desk in front of her held the usual scatter of files, a cold cup of something she hadn’t finished.

"I don’t think you’re hearing what I’m actually saying."

"I understand you completely."

"No. You don’t."

She reached out and picked up a file off the desk, opened it, and didn’t look at a single word on the page. The text swam without meaning. She was only giving her hands something to do while the rest of her tried to find a shape Monica would accept.

"How many people are we supposed to sacrifice for this? The man wanted the walls open. That’s all. Open the gates, let his people drive their trucks through, close them again, and nobody else in this capital turns."

"And what would you have done, in Sinn’s chair?"

"I’d have put my pride on the floor where it belongs." She dropped the file shut. The sound was sharper than she’d intended. "Opened the gates. Let his people in. He isn’t a monster, Monica, he’s a man watching his own people suffocating. I don’t see one single thing separating what he’s doing from what we’re doing."

"Sinn is a leader, Lisa." Monica’s voice didn’t shift a degree. The same ease. The same absolute certainty. "There are decisions only leaders are equipped to understand."

Melissa was on her feet again before she’d decided to be. The chair scraped back. The movement carried her halfway to the window before she caught herself.

"Don’t tell me you’re taking his side. More bodies inside these walls is an advantage to us. Ours. And it would have stopped people dying tonight."

"People."

Monica repeated exactly one word out of everything she’d said, and left it sitting there. The single syllable arrived clean and final and rearranged the entire conversation around itself. Melissa felt the shift land in her chest like something physical.

She passed a hand down over her own face.

There it is. That’s the whole conversation, in one word.

"Can I be honest with you?"

"Please."

She stood with the comms at her ear and said nothing for a few seconds. Long enough that she heard her own breathing come back down the line—soft, slightly uneven, the sound of a woman who had just understood how much of the argument was already finished before she started it.

"I don’t see why Bala had to be eliminated."

Nothing from the other end. The silence was complete. Not the silence of someone thinking. The silence of someone who had already decided the subject was closed and was only waiting to see whether Melissa would notice.

"The entire goal was more ability users. That was the point. That was what all of this was for." She turned toward the window. Below, the ring of infected soldiers continued their slow, empty circle around the building—uniforms still on, rifles still slung, the same patient orbit they had held since the lockdown began. The late light laid them in long dark shapes across the concrete. "And every single day since we took this place, there are fewer of them. Not more. Fewer. We’re moving in the wrong direction and nobody in this family will say it out loud."

"I understand your frustration." Monica’s voice softened by a fraction. "But everything is under control. Truly. The infection cannot touch us, Lisa. I sat with Sophia this morning and we went through all of it, every part. Just be strong a little longer."

"Okay."

Melissa lowered herself back into the chair. The leather was still warm from the last time. Her free hand found the edge of the desk and stayed there.

"I want you to know that nothing can stand in our way. Nothing that exists inside these walls, and nothing outside them."

Melissa nodded at an empty room, and caught herself doing it, and understood in that second that she had been waiting days to be told exactly that by somebody older than her. The nod was automatic. The relief that came with the words was real and humiliating and completely hers.

A wind moved through the office.

There was no window open. The air conditioning had not changed its note. The wind arrived anyway—cool, precise, lifting the strands of white hair off her neck in a single clean motion—and Mute was standing in the middle of the floor in front of her desk, and she still had the comms against her ear.

The borrowed body held itself with the same patient stillness it had carried in every room she had seen it in. Tall. Slightly wrong in the proportions. The eyes already on hers.

Did I frighten you?

His mouth didn’t move at all. The words arrived behind her eyes the way they always did.

No. Wait. I’m still on a call.

"Lisa?" Monica had noticed the silence. The ease in her voice thinned by a fraction. "Are you still there?"

"Yes. I’m listening."

Who is it?

None of your business.

My mother?

No. It’s Monica.

Monica. Something moved across his borrowed face. Tell her Vince sends his greetings.

Melissa held his eyes across the desk and said nothing into the comms. The white hair settled back. The wind that had brought him was already gone.

"We want you close to Sinn," Monica said. "That’s all. That’s the whole instruction. Stay near him."

"Okay."

The line disconnected. The soft click of the ended call was the only ordinary sound left in the room.

Melissa lowered the comms and looked properly at the tall boy standing in front of her desk. The borrowed face. The patient eyes. The particular emptiness that lived behind the expression and had never once belonged to the body wearing it.

"Where have you come from," she said, "and what do you want, Vincent?"

"I want the file on Abram." He was already moving, coming around the side of the desk toward her chair with the unhurried certainty of someone who had already decided the answer was yes. "All of it. Everything CGI has on him from the day he crossed the life layer."

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