Act Fifteen –Interlude: Confrontation
'It was worth being Alex's escort to the Ball just to see the look on his face when Beck's gang showed up. It had only taken a little work to arrange his timely entrance, and the rest was Beck's own plot. With a little expert help. I don't like to think of her helping him though… they get along… too well, almost.'
The music in the grand ballroom played loudly on the dance floor, but much quieter on the balcony above, so that the mingling power players of Paradigm City could conduct whatever business or pleasure they pleased while the citizens attending the Ball to support the Military Police or in memorial to those who died at the Incident could mingle below. The later group was smaller, and much older than the former, but some of the members of that group held as much influence as those people on the balcony, if not in political power, at least as financers of the Corporation.
It was almost midnight when Angel made her way up to the executive balcony. She wanted to be at the proper audience position when the show began.
Standing demurely on Alex's left hand side, Angel smiled and laughed pleasantly at his jokes, along with a small, select group of his Executive Board. Inwardly, she wanted nothing more than to see the safe departure of Roger Smith, despite Alex's plans for the Negotiator. Let Alex do what he wanted with the cursed robot, but the Negotiator was another matter entirely.
What happened first was that the lights went out on the balcony. Not having expected Schwarzwald to make such an extravagant entrance, Angel's shock was as real as it could be. His loud, preaching words to the Paradigm Executives made the perfect introduction for the shattering glass that came next.
As the glass shattered, Angel fought her way to the edge of the balcony to scan the crowd for Roger and see if he ever found his escort. She found Roger easily enough, talking quietly with Dastun and a few young women who were fawning over him in a slightly shameless manner. The people on the main floor hadn't even noticed Schwarzwald's entrance, since the balcony, beautifully remote, was nearly two stories above the ballroom itself. The people mingling below did, however, hear the shattering sound of the glass.
From her position, holding the railing tightly so she looked like she was scared, which Alex would have applauded her for if he weren't struggling to keep the board members calm, Angel saw what Roger's reaction to the entrants was.
And had one of her own.
Beck did not, as he had planned with Angel, come into the ballroom alone, but with the recovered replica of Dorothy on his arm. Upon seeing this, the stark and deathly still incarnation of his own escort, Roger stumbled backwards, and as she smiled at him, he turned to say something to Dastun that he never uttered, because he passed out. Angel herself was surprised at his escort, though she could understand that reaction quite well, but as her wide, hawk-like gaze watched the next events, narrated by Schwarzwald's sermon on memories and the destruction Paradigm was destined to call down upon humanity once more, she saw the cold replication move away from Beck, so fast that her motion was barely discernable as more than a swift black streak as she moved through the crowds.
Narrowing her eyes, she realized that she had been out maneuvered.
Beck and his men, who filed in and fanned out as though flanking him militarily, proceeded to cause the ruckus required for the next step of Angel and Beck's scheming, as well as Alex's, and she felt a firm hand on her shoulder.
Looking up, she saw the high brow and stern expression of her own escort. "It's time we were off, Angel," he hissed low in her ear. "We have much to talk about."
He grabbed her by the elbow then and pulled her through the frantic crowd towards the exit. If he had turned back for even a moment, he might have seen the almost sinister smile on her face.