Annastasia

21.

Apex Fauna (Part 2)

"Am I doing it right?" Annastasia asked loudly, continuously shoveling a pile of cement and sand into itself until it was a diffused mixture, hoping that she was mimicking the seen tactic correctly.

"It's got a bit too much cement in it, and a little too runny, but it's fine," the mason yelled down from his scaffold after glancing at the large pile of mixed mortar, trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice – it was the third time she'd asked him in ten minutes. "Better more cement than sand, it'll hold better, but take it easier next time. Load the stuff into the buckets, and let 'em haul it up, I've got bricks that needed laying an hour ago."

"Eh?" she looked a bit guilty, and the mason could easily guess why, and this was affirmed when the girl seemed to hasten her work to shovel the mortar into the buckets close by to be lifted via the pulley up to him where he stood on the scaffold.

"It's not your fault, you're fine, believe me. Everything's behind schedule, and the foreman's trying to bite everyone's head off. I'm behind by an hour. Everyone else is behind by at least two. He'll bother me last, so thanks." In response to his gratitude, she beamed at him and continued to happily work alongside the other labourers which, in varying degrees, shared her cheerfulness. She wasn't an appointed labourer, she was merely an extra who lightened their work just by helping. More so to the effect, she was a volunteer, and wherever she went, she boosted productivity and unknowingly boosted morale.

Labouring wasn't her job, and surely nowhere close to her original post if there were any shiftings or deviations on the listing. She was an engineer and she would be working soon enough on the machinery that was inside the power station that was currently being built by other more senior engineers who currently were supervised by her father. When that was done, she'd be working on the light posts and the power lines that would make up the grid in the town and nearby towards the cities further inland, though she'd be centrally based in Niederlande.From what her father had informed her, she could also end up helping him monitor the dials that would be managing the electricity, so she guessed that she'd be having a lot of sleepless nights too.

Most, if not everyone on the worksite knew as well as she did that she didn't belong there working with them. Opting for the hardest jobs that remained in her weight class, dressed in her worst and grimed all over with splattered cement, dried sweat, and mud, with calluses forming in the palms of her hands; she felt happy just being there with them. Most of them were Canopians, her people. She was working alongside them, a way of somehow letting them know that she wasn't any better than they were and that she was willing to subject herself to their imposed way of life.

Truth be told, she'd felt a lot better ever since finding the Something, and was extremely attached to it. More than once, she truly thought of it as an item that helped prove that she was special, an item to which she was born to use, a culmination of all she'd gone through. It was something she deserved, what she had spent her life yearning for. Furthermore, now that she had a newfound purpose in life, she felt able to be a part of society with everyone else and was comfortable doing manual labour when anyone would normally claim the opposite. Any task would be fine to fill her day, so long as she had the meteorite and could find the time whenever she wanted to study it, as well as experiment with its mystifying powers.

I can't do too much experimenting, though, daddy doesn't like it. I might need to find somewhere more private. Maybe behind the hill at night. Recalling the hill where she had found the Something, all of a sudden, she thought of the white creature that had brazenly stolen her lunch basket earlier that morning while she was locking the front door of the house in which she and her father were staying. She was so tempted to make a blade from the Something and give chase, but her father had said it was dangerous since they knew so little about the local fauna. After she finished loading the buckets with the mortar, she finally retreated to one of the large tarpaulins to take shade from the midday sun, hungry enough to eat a herd of horses.

"I was wondering when you'd take a break," a young man said, one of her fellow labourers that she'd just been working alongside. "If you kept on working, you'd make us look bad, much less the other groups. Are you sure you're even human?"

"I'm not a machine," she grumbled, "I get tired too."

"Yeah?" he asked in skepticism. "If the mason said right this minute that he wanted another round of mortar, you wouldn't go out there and help mix it?"

She paused to think about that one. Remembering that her hands were still filthy, she rubbed her sleeved shoulders and upper arms across her face to wipe away the sweat that was threatening to pour over her brows and into her eyes. "I would, but I want food first. I'm famished." Somewhere, far off, she thought that she could hear the train. I wonder if Grace-Ann's on board. She said that she'd come back this week. We need to talk, me, her, and daddy.

He said, "Don't you normally carry your own lunch? I've seen you with it a couple of times. Why's today any different?"

"I did pack one, but some rabbit-looking thing stole it this morning. I was distracted, and it just rounded the corner of the place where I'm staying, snapped up the handle with its mouth and made off with it."

"Rabbit? Stealing?" the young man echoed. "I've got an idea what you're talking about, and I've seen it. My sister got a good look at it too when it tried to raid the food pantries earlier this week, and she's certain it's a parasite. You're better off letting it be. Who knows what it could be capable of."

"A what? A parasite?" Annie boggled. "Here? Stealing lunches?"

"Who said that they can't steal lunches?" he asked dryly. "Ever met one that said so?"

"What's a parasite doing stealing lunches?"

"I guess… Eating the lunches?" he joked lamely.

"Oh, you're hilarious," she grumbled contemptuously, and the young man laughed. Despite the ridiculous intentions and suppositions, Annie had to give it some serious thought. While she wasn't sure if the creature was indeed a parasite or not – and if it was, it needed plenty of caution and distance due to their precarious nature – she was uncertain if the creature had targeted her out of spite. Regardless of this, given what she had seen of it before on the hill when it replicated its food by utilizing the Something's powers, and today when it had stolen her lunch, it was safe to ascertain that the creature was a glutton. If it couldn't use the Something to sate its appetite in one way, it'd find another way and given what the man had just said, it was becoming a food larcenist, if it wasn't one already.

"I think it's a serious problem, all jokes aside, and it might need putting down," the man suggested.

"I think so too," Annie agreed. "Any ideas who should I talk to about it? Who could deal with it?"

"Maybe that officer from Immigrations?" he guessed. "She should do something about it, it's messing with our supplies after all, and it's her job to manage us. We can't work if it makes us starve to death. At least if she can't wrangle it, she can bring in the people to deal with it."

The girl gave it some thought. She had to discuss the Something with her anyway, and she could just bring up the parasite. "You're right. I think she might've come today on the train. I'll talk to her." Her stomach growled audibly, and it was so loud that Annie was certain that the man had heard it. If he did, he gave no notice, and that was all she needed to quell the embarrassment. "By the Goddesses, if I don't get food right this minute, I'm going to get ulcers." Bidding the man goodbye, she followed the smell of smoke and cooking food to the far south end of the worksite where no less than two dozen women and girls were cooking the food for hundreds of labourers.

Stereotypes aside of why Grace-Ann put all females in the groups for meal preparation and distribution – surely because males tended to have the physique for most of the manual labor required – Annie thought their ages ranged from nine or ten to late sixties or early seventies. Most of the pots were covered to hold in steam, most of them undoubtedly being rice, and it hinted that they weren't nearly done yet, though corn and potatoes were undoubtedly ready. Chevon was cooking still close by, and farther down, the familiar stench of rabbit meat being stewed. There was a pungent fruity aroma that Annie could almost sample in the air and madly searched for the source. There were three wide dutch ovens by their lonesome, standing atop burning coals instead of the standard wood, and more of the same was resting on metal sheets over the top; puddings and pound cakes were being baked, and Annie salivated in anticipation.

She approached as close enough as she could dare to not appear as much as desperate and starved as she actually was, and asked when lunch would be ready. She mostly received generic vague responses of 'soon', and 'almost ready', but she was certain that it'd never taken so long before. She hadn't had the time to finish all her porridge for breakfast that morning, and coupling that with her thieved lunch, the girl thought she might faint, and wondered if there was some way she could swipe a baked sweet potato or roasted corn without any of the women detecting the theft. She hung back to watch their movements, trying to observe any distractions or gaps where the food was vulnerable, but she had to give up – there were too many eyes, and with the openness of the area, there was no way for her to get close without being noticed.

What I'd give just for a taste. Is this what that parasite feels like? she thought, considering the parasite's situation. Can't it just forage like a normal critter? It did forage, that much was obvious from her first encounter with it, but that apparently wasn't enough for it. It used the Something to double its food. I wonder if I could do that too? Wait, of course, I can! I've duplicated some stuff before. And I'm definitely more intelligent than any dumb parasite. I could try making something from scratch! Retreating to the tarpaulin where she had rested previously, she flipped a bucket upside down and sat on it behind a stacked pile of lumber and tools, using it as cover for privacy. Wiping her hands off on her thigh to make sure that they were clean as they were could get, she removed the Something from her hip pocket.

She was rarely without it, and when it wasn't on her person, it was always in the room with her. Not just about incredible power or the fact that it could age anyone else but her to death if they happened to touch it, but she wasn't about to let her newfound purpose out of her sight. It could be of some use now, though impromptu. She wanted to create food. She'd created things before, but they were usually simple things; she always failed when she attempted otherwise. She didn't have much imagination or ingenuity, but it wasn't the only limiting factor: it took at least a basic understanding of physics and chemistry to make something from the elements. It was far simpler to have it duplicate another item but she didn't have that luxury this time.

Okay, something simple. Maybe fruit or a vegetable. Worse comes to worst, at least I can make some water to keep my guts from digesting itself. She imagined a baked sweet potato like the ones she'd just seen. Oh shit, no, I can't. Not only do I have to make it, but it has to be COOKED? I can't do anything that complicated. Okay, a fruit. Something I don't have to cook. Or peel. She immediately thought of blueberries, something small. Perhaps they were in the puddings and she'd smelt it, no other probable reason why they crossed her mind. Come on, it's so small and insignificant. Make a blueberry. Make a blueberry. A blueberry. Blueberry. Imagining the shape, the smell, their taste, she told the Rock to make the fruit, and as it usually did, the small fruit materialized into her hand out of thin air.

Without further ado, she popped the berry into her mouth. The second her teeth punctured it and the juices flowed over her tongue, she almost spat it out again. It was more than tolerably bland, and Annie thought that she was eating something that tasted like a heavily borrowed weeks-old newspaper.

By the Goddesses, it came a close second to that alcohol she tried years ago at Gregory's house. What's worse was that she was now responsible for the worst tasting things in her life, and she actually made one of them.

I might never cook again. However, her hunger wasn't sated in the least. In fact, it was only whetted by the blueberry she'd made, her stomach crying for more sustenance; she decided to try to make something bigger and hope that her luck would be better. Let's try an apple. You've had plenty of those, so it shouldn't be hard. Mind the taste. Once more, she made a fruit, but the apple had the texture of ash and tasted about the same, and it was the first time in decades that Annie actually worried that something could poison her so she didn't even try finishing it. Dropping the fruit to the ground, she made up her mind to try only one more time before settling for plain water. Apple. It should TASTE like an apple. Red skin. It's edible. It's clean. It was like painting or sculpting with her mind, trying to dab in the details on a blank canvas or chipping it out of pale marble; she finally imagined picking the apple from a tree from a low bough, and it appeared in her hand. It looked perfect, not a blemish anywhere. The stem didn't look picked, however, but like it grew out of the apple and stopped halfway when the opposite was true.

She took a tentative bite. It wasn't awful. It was the best tier of insipidness she could hope to achieve if she replicated a natural apple, so this was evidence that she was getting better at using the Rock. With her ravenous hunger, she didn't have to force herself to eat the apple but halfway through, unfortunately, she came to realize that she had hit an upper limit. For one thing, replicating an item usually had all the right qualities that it should have. That is to say, the item was genuine, and so was the creation from scratch. But she couldn't improvise or impersonate biological material enough for it to be passable.

The apple had no seeds, so there would be no future germination. It'd never been created on a tree. It'd take a greater understanding of biology to create a better-tasting apple, the nuances of the sciences of life and organisms, the culture of germs and pests, and animal dung and soil to make a perfect apple. In other words, it was impossible for her with too many things to account for, and without the understanding of how those would have to be created and how they should come into play.

I could even make mummy, I bet. But anyone could make a human-shaped doll. It wouldn't breathe. Laugh, talk, cry, have hopes or love. Cut her open. Would she even bleed? If she did, would it even be real blood? Making some water to settle her stomach, she looked up when she heard the foreman's bell ringing loudly, signaling everyone to stop working. It was more an indication to the girl that it was finally lunchtime but found no line forming to where the women had been cooking. It was confusing at first, but she soon realized that the meals were being distributed to the workers in groups, the same ones in which they operated. She had to find the set of labourers she was working with before they were served or she'd be left out.

I pick now of all times to go off somewhere else?! She ran off to where they were before, but she couldn't find them. She didn't know their names either; she circulated herself too much amongst all the groups to get to know anyone personally, and everyone almost looked the same in their filthy, grey cement encrusted clothes. She had an easier time picking out the stars and knowing them by name than finding her group in the sea of faces.

"Oh hey! It's you!" A feminine voice called, a hand catching at Annie's arm like a slack-handed slap to get her attention just as she was walking past. "Annastasia, wasn't it? How're you doing?" Annie peered down at the woman who sat on an improvised bench of a long piece of lumber resting on two large concrete blocks with six or seven other people seated along the line – the bench was barely in the shade of a nearby sheet of tarpaulin that was overhead but it would suffice for a half-hour lunch. She didn't recognize the thin-set middle-aged woman at first who sat on the end of the bench closest to where she stood, and the woman realize this quickly and provided her reference: "We worked two days ago, gathering gravel from the river."

Annie said simply, "Oh. Hello."

"You don't remember me, do you?" she accused gently.

"I'm afraid not," she replied half-ashamedly. "I don't have enough brain space to remember everyone I've worked with, and I'm trying to find my group."

"You know the leader's name? Or the mason in charge? I could help point them out where they could be?" Annie hadn't a clue as to who that was, and while she was sure that they mentioned the mason's name in order to get his attention, and no matter how much it was on the tip of her tongue, she just couldn't remember it.

"Well, a rolling stone gathers no moss. Or even a first name," the woman said, sounding admonishing yet laughing at the same time. You'll never find them in time. You can sit with us." She scooted down the seat, asking everyone to make some extra space by eliminating the gaps so that Annie could sit beside her. "At least long enough for you to get some food. You can find them later when it's time to get back to work… or… you could come back to work with us?" she added slyly.

"So you're only helping me for quid pro quo?" Annie grumbled.

"Sort of. I'm helping you because of quid pro quo. You really helped us a couple of days ago, so now we get a chance to return the favor –" Annie's shoulder brushed heavily against hers. "– Goddesses, you're so sweaty!" The woman gave the girl a once over. "You've been working with the labourers today, haven't you?"

"Guilty. Besides the sweat, it hasn't been that bad."

"You've been doing a little of everything, haven't you? Aren't you afraid that Immigration's woman is going to get you into trouble?"

"I don't think she'll mind," Annie replied. "I'm just volunteering. I want to help out, that's all. My job basically starts when the building's finished, and I didn't mind keeping myself occupied."

"Right. I heard that you're actually an engineer," the woman said conspiratorily. "So it's true? You look so young! And about that doctor that you bashed with the shovel–"

Annie interrupted. "I'd rather not talk –"

"Okay, okay," the woman said quickly. "I thought that was you. When I saw how hard you were working at the river to gather the gravel, I was amazed. The enthusiasm feels misplaced, honestly, but you're a lot stronger than you look. And the energy… Honestly, I felt a little embarrassed, 'cause you were making some of us look bad." Along the line of the others on the bench, a few others were in agreement, and it got Annie to smile.

"I've been hearing that a lot, I suppose I've got that effect wherever I go. Anyway, I just wanted to be of use. What can I say? There's more to me than meets the eye." They chatted for a while, and Annie noticed that four of the workers on the bench were given food by two girls in porringer pans made out of pewter metal. The bowls looked a lot like silver but were truly made with cheaper stuff. This actually said a lot about Chess giving the refugees inexpensive porridge bowls in which the refugees had all their meals; they were willing to skimp to cut costs, and while this move made sense, Annie knew that they were easily capable of more, given what she had heard about magic.

Maybe I could make some better bowls. Maybe even out of gold. Who knows?

The girls soon returned with four more bowls, and one of them looked at Annie hard. "The sheet says there are eight people with this group. Shouldn't you be with your group before you're left out? You look like one of the mixers."

"Hmm?" She hadn't been paying that much attention, and nearly had to pinch herself to keep from looking down into the bowl of the woman who sat next to her whose food had made her hunger return in full force. "Oh, it's true. But I couldn't find them."

"The roster wouldn't have her name anyway. This is Annastasia, the girl I've told you about," the woman said, looking at the younger of the two specifically. "She doesn't have a group, but she doesn't have anything to eat. She's a good worker. Bring a bowl for her, please."

"Fine, fine. I'll try." They both retreated and while they were leaving, Annie begged them to get a slice of the pudding for her, and the woman nudged Annie.

"That's my daughter. The smaller one."

"I gathered as much. She looks like you."

"You think? I always thought she took after her father. Do you want a bite until yours gets here? You look really hungry."

"I couldn't stop with just one bite."

"You sure?"

Annie's lips curled into a smile; the woman was a mother through and through, and it reminded her of her mummy. Although she was probably as old to be the woman's sister, it didn't stop her from looking down at her as someone to be taken care of. "You could hurry up and eat to get that food out of my sightline before I end up fighting you for it."

The woman laughed. "Eh, no, I wouldn't want that to happen." They fell into silence after this, the woman eating her meal, and Annie who was left looking away anxiously to keep from staring at the woman's meal. She tried noticing things around her to divert her attention elsewhere but it was downright impossible with all the scents of food suffusing the air around her. It was taking so long that everyone else had finished theirs, and most of them were starting to get up to dawdle around and smoke and chat, and the woman beside her apparently felt just as self-conscious about it. "Hope those cooks aren't pushing her around. I'll go look for her. Worse comes to worst, I'll butter one of them up to give me seconds so I can get you something to eat."

"Yes please, and thanks. And the pudd–"

"–And the pudding," the woman interjected. "Sweet tooth, isn't it? Right, I'll make sure you get a slice."

They were gone now, and Annie was the only one left to wait on the bench save for only two of the other workers. Too late now, the girl wondered if she should have somehow tried to duplicate the woman's food without her noticing. That wasn't right, of course she'd notice. Regardless, Annie continued to entertain herself with fantasies of the possible outcomes and reactions, so much so that someone plopped themselves down in the seat next to her. She was jolted back to reality, and tried to tell the person that they were sitting in someone else's seat. "Could you at least move further down – Grace-Ann?" She nearly did a double-take when she saw that it was the Immigration officer, and found herself having mixed reactions. "What are you doing here?"

"Protecting–" the woman muttered in between her pants for breath, and Annie took notice of how disheveled the woman looked. Her normally well-kept hair looked windblown in odd degrees, her clothes were unkempt and her skirt was split straight down the sides, and soiled with mud and dirt at the lowest regions along with her dress boots. She groaned in pain, and started undoing the upper half of her dress buttons, and reached her hand down the front. Straining and pulling, unheeding her surroundings as well as the people around her, she retrieved a pistol from the corset underneath the clothes, and breathed a sigh of relief. "That was so restrictive," she mumbled. "Annie, have you seen anyone suspicious? It's a woman, I don't know much more than that."

The Van De Sterren gave the primate feral a deadpan look. "If I've seen a suspicious woman?" she asked before poking the woman's arm. "Wonder who that is? And what in the Goddesses' name are you doing with that gun?"

"Aren't guns illegal in Chess?" One of the workmen on the bench asked, dumbfounded as he scooted away from her. "Lady, are you allowed to have that–"

Still trying to catch her breath, she said shortly, "It's lawful if I have one." Annie couldn't decide if she was speaking with candor or not and didn't press the issue. The woman looked so worried and out-of-order that the girl believed that someone must have been aggravating her, maybe even fighting her. "One of the workers finally decided he's had enough of you, eh? Don't you have any smug replies for him?"

"This isn't a joke, Annie!" The woman hissed through clenched teeth. "There's someone dangerous here who's after you and that Rock!" The moment that the woman's outcry dropped on her, Annie froze, and she didn't stop there. "I can't find them! All I know is that it's a woman who came in today on the train… I can only hope that I outran them here."

Annie's hand was in her pocket, unconsciously checking if the Something was still there, but didn't let go once her hands closed around it, which was dangerous since she could accidentally make something while it was in an enclosed space on her person. Reminding herself of this fact, she unwillingly let go and looked around to see if anyone was observing her in particular. No one was, and anyone who was taking notice of the situation was watching the primate feral instead. "Can't you just figure out what they're thinking?" she said hintingly.

"I can't. For them, it doesn't work. They might even be able to do the same thing, there's no other explanation as to how they got here into Chess and made their way here only a week after you dug that thing up."

Annie's eyes narrowed. "So, how much do you know about it, then? How do I know this isn't some ploy for you to take it for yourself?"

"I know enough that I can't ever hope to use it, or even touch it," the woman said lamely, hoping that the girl would believe her; she somewhat coveted her sister's powers now, as she could just force Annie to believe her and get rid of the radical far more quickly and simply. "If you truly want the Rock, then keep it. But if your father's right, then you should find a way to get rid of it."

"Right about what?"

There were things better said in private, and this was one such time. Yet, Grace-Ann knew that Annie needed to be cautioned at the very least.

"Imagine someone like me. I know what you're thinking. I've waited for this Rock to appear, and I waited until someone found it before I decided to come to collect it, and I may very well kill you for it. Imagine if I were your enemy. How would you beat me? Could you? How would you sleep at night, knowing that I'll steal it from you when you're deep in slumber? Could you go out into public ever again, where a knife could find its way into your back? You'd have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life." The suggestion didn't go over Annie's head, and the thought that someone supernaturally aware of her thoughts was after her didn't bode well with the girl, and she wondered how to defend herself. Yet, she recalled that Grace-Ann said that she couldn't read their minds.

"So how do you know that someone's after me?"

"My sister didn't have a clue about you or that thing, but she knew what the person was up to," Grace-Ann said simply as if that explained everything that Annie needed to know. Removing the smuggled rifle bullet from her pocket, she grabbed a metal fork from a nearby bowl and started to try working the head out of the cartridge case. After a few minutes of ceaseless effort and grunts and mild cursing, the head popped out of the case, and the girl watched on in interest.

"You needed the gunpowder?"

"Yes." Deftly flicking open the pan, she started to carefully dump the gunpowder into the flintlock pistol. She could hear Annie's unvoiced questions and didn't want to give the girl the wrong impression. Giving the girl a mild stare, she said, "Yes, I've done this before. I wasn't a rebel, but I had to escape the war, Annie. I've had to do much worse than this with much less than what I have. The guns that the soldiers had, those Repeaters." She found herself nearing terrible memories of the massacre, and could only capture the horror with mute descriptions. "They killed my family, massacred the entire tribe, burnt my territory right down to the ground. To think that I was lucky! My sister wasn't. She doesn't care for you. Perhaps you could convince her otherwise, but if she knew who was responsible for those guns…" She trailed off, let it hang. She whispered: "She can't read minds, but – how to explain it? – she hears hearts, its motives and desires, and fears. The heart of this person alerted her, and she told me. That's why I'm here."

"Not just your job?" Annie asked quietly, though she was secretly more worried about this woman's sister. She sounded absolutely dangerous, and if she could somehow read 'hearts', as Grace-Ann described it, then who knew what she was capable of?

The woman returned to dumping the gunpowder, doing it carefully to not cause any to spill or cause a flash-in-the-pan, or worse: allow the gun to accidentally go off. "I'm trying to protect you."

"And here I thought you didn't care–"

"I think I might actually care more about the refugees on a whole than I do for you," Grace-Ann said seriously. "They're victims of circumstances. So are you, but you've been far more altogether fortunate than they've been, and you abuse your privileges, you're impolite, spoilt, unrepentant, threatening to bash my head in with a rock on that hill, all week you're thinking of blackmailing a government official –"

"I'm a mess," Annie interrupted crossly. "Thanks."

"– But you tried to wish your life away, and I don't even need to know what you're thinking to figure out that your heart's in the right place. Your father has all these dreams and fears for you, and they're contagious as much as they're plausible," she admitted as she finally transferred all the gunpowder and readied the flintlock. "It's scary to admit they could be true, so I can't help but want to keep you safe. It's for the better, for everyone, not just you and your father."

"I could look after myself. But what is daddy thinking?" the girl had started to say, but the woman had suddenly looked up in a panic at the people approaching her and the Van De Sterren from her side. It was a woman and a girl with a man walking closely behind, and when they got close, to Annie's shock, Grace-Ann barked for them to stop where they were.

"Oh Goddesses!" the man cried as he put his hands up. "What's this about?" The woman was echoing the same, and the girl dropped a bowl of food that was supposedly Annie's, but she didn't even pay it any mind as Grace-Ann pointed the gun at all three of them, visibly stressed as she aimed it at them in turn. The girl threw herself against her mother, and the primate feral unconsciously linked them to the scene that her sister had been in shortly before she had killed the woman and her son at the train station. She briefly thought this was synchronicity working fate to see how she would react, but realized that Annie came first; she couldn't afford a single mistake.

"Don't move! Not a single step!"

"Grace-Ann, what the he– what are you doing?!" Annastasia sputtered. "They're not dangerous! I know them!"

"You know them?" Grace-Ann asked nervously. She visibly shook, wanting to lower the gun before the government somehow sacked her over a misunderstanding, but didn't. She was so certain that only two minds had approached her just now, and found herself pointing the gun at the woman. One of the three people was obviously the radical she had been hounding after all morning, and her sister had said it was a woman. "You! Step away from the others, and lie on the ground with your hands on your head! You're under arrest!"

"What? But I didn't do anything! Are you even working with the police? What am I being arrested for –"

Grace-Ann yelled at the top of her lungs, "Shut up! SHUT… UP! I have only one bullet and there'll be no warning shots. Try to play the fool for a second and you're done. Get down on the ground and put your hands on your head! Now!" Fright and confusion prevailing, the woman did what she was told, telling her daughter to go find her father, but the girl refused to budge and started to cry bitterly for the woman with the gun to leave her mother alone.

"This has to be a mistake," Annie exclaimed, trying to get her friend's attention. "She was with me! She couldn't have come on the train at lunchtime, and you ran here! You would've beaten her here!"

"She thinks I came on the train today? I've been here all day! Annastasia!" The woman yelled, her voice muffled with her face lying in the dirt, "tell her! And I was here working with you two days ago!"

Annie agreed. "Yeah! That's true! I worked with her earlier this week, at the river." The woman didn't know what to believe but didn't stop aiming at the woman. The man looked badly as if he wanted to leave without the feral's notice, and the girl was pleading for her mother to be spared. "You couldn't have been searching for any of these people. You're looking for a woman, but she was always here. We were chatting for a long time. She only just got up to look for her daughter. That's her, the little girl–"

"Annastasia," the feral said sternly, "please be quiet."

The little girl looked confused about all that was happening, only equaled by Grace-Ann. There was a deluge of thoughts all around, raising a mental bedlam that was riding her mind increasingly towards insanity. She couldn't tell which was which anymore; all she knew from the original moment was that she felt two minds approaching when there were three people, and she wondered if she could be wrong. She'd been wrong before, and her failure to notice that the guns were moved from the depot kept coming back to her, reminding her that her ability had its fallacies, not to mention where the radical was concerned. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm herself, knowing that even if she tried to shout for everyone to be quiet, the noise would continue unabated inside her mind.

She had to quiet them somehow.

"Silence!" she screamed and continued to aim at the woman. "My sister is on the train. Radical, you know her. I know you saw her kill those two this morning. Don't you for even a single fracking second believe that you'll get away again. I caught you, and you're going to jail. As soon as you're in chains, you're going to jail!" Everyone was quieted as the woman continued, "If you or anyone continues to impede me and I call her here by firing the gun, she will come and kill the guilty one, whether it's really you or not, and SLAUGHTER every single person here who even thinks of opening their mouths. Amara's sanctioned by the government to kill anyone who obstructs it or its workers, and you don't have any right to argue. So shut up and deal with me, or you're all going to deal with her instead."

They were silent. Most of them were imagining someone who looked like her with far more bloodthirst, and Grace-Ann didn't know how to tell them how accurate they were.

"There was an old story," she said with a little hush, mostly to Annie, then increasingly louder to the others. "A story about a monkey's paw, a popular fairytale. It could grant wishes on its fingers. The author said it was based on a true story. The dumb soldiers got it into their heads that monkey fingers could grant wishes. That wasn't true. It's just life. You do something right, you move on. You do something wrong, you learn a lesson, stagnate for a little while, then move on, being all the better from it. The tribe thought it was luck, but it wasn't just that. It's synchronicity. If my mind runs on you repeatedly, it's a sign that you could be in trouble. If you see my name in a newspaper, it might mean that you ought to get in touch with me. The world organizes these little benefits, the issues, the coincidences – and they all have meaning – but our talent orchestrated fate. Life is full of them, but every setback, scenarios that push people together, and every error is a way for us to improve, to self-correct so that we learn from our mistakes. Meetings to enable us to relate and co-exist. It's not luck, not a product of chance. It was our way to become better, and evolve."

This part of what the woman said made no sense to anyone, but it swiftly waxed darker and more morbid. "If people believe that I'm wrong, then I will be wrong. I'll learn my lesson, and Amara will make sure that they'll learn theirs. The more you look up to me, the better I take care of you. If more people believe I'll find who I'm looking for, then coincidence will work out that I'll find you. I promise." Her gun swiveled, pointing at all in the crowd before settling on the woman on the ground, the man standing with his hands in the air, and the girl who was still sobbing. "Do you think I'll find the one who's working with the Skullheart, Annie?"

"What?" the girl blurted as her eyes widened. Heeding closely for the thoughts that welled up, Grace-Ann identified them all, picked them out, and listened for the only inner voice that was quiet. The gun aimed at the man, who stared at her wide-eyed, apparently mumbling a prayer. The woman was bawling into the dirt that was caking into the mud on her face as the gun curved to her, begging for her life. Finally, it rested on the girl, who was begging for the woman to put the gun away, and her mother grew frantic and started to get up to protect her – Annie moved to try to stop the primate feral.

"It's really you, isn't it?" Grace-Ann said quietly; Annie was trying to grab at her arm before she killed the girl, but the feral strode forward out of her reach before her gun sharply pointed back at the woman who was in the act of getting up. The trigger was pulled, and a slight delay before the gun exploded, delivering a lead ball that put a hole through her heart and sent her sprawling to the ground again. After the thunder was only silence then screams, and the woman didn't move anymore.