The place she found herself in seemed... familiar. Taylor couldn't remember when or under what circumstances she'd been there, but an insane, maddening sense of déjà vu never left her as she contemplated the place she'd found herself in.
It was a spacious hall, with a high ceiling that reached down into the darkness and walls draped with velvet fabric. A long row of cupboards along the walls was draped with the same velvet material. Beneath her feet, she found a matching carpet.
She appeared seated in a comfortable and spacious purple upholstered chair at an empty table, again covered with a tablecloth similar in color to the rest of the room.
But that was by no means the surprise in this quaint place. The wall in front of her was no wall at all. She was sitting in front of a huge metal lattice, behind which glowing darkness swirled.
It sounded like an oxymoron, but still, at this very moment in space-time, the statement was true for her. The blued metal of the lattice swirled in a whimsical pattern that was still vaguely familiar to her.
This place... It looked strange. It felt strange, and that was even putting aside the sense of déjà vu she'd been experiencing. It was like... it was abandoned. No, there was not even a hint of dust here, and the oil wall lights that gave light to the place shone unevenly and brightly and yet it felt so.
" Fair Lady wanted to find a place where we could talk..." Alice's voice, coming from behind Taylor, made her flinch and turn around to see Persona, dressed in her usual blue outfit. And she was smiling warmly again, looking at her.
"Where are we?" was the only legitimate question Taylor could ask. She knew the place. And at the same time, she didn't remember it.
"My Lady, it is pointless to ask about location in a place that exists on the borders of inreality. This is Velvet Room. Here, beyond this line," she pointed to the cage behind which darkness swirled, "lies the Gate between the conscious and the unconscious. Your world to rule, our world to exist."
"So you... live there?" - Taylor nodded toward the bars.
-"It would be more accurate to say that we exist, Noble Contractor. We are nothing but the spawn of humanity's belief in us; we have no unity of body and no permanence of memory. We exist while we are known, and we die forgotten," Alice's voice didn't waver or change for a second. Though Taylor couldn't even imagine what it would be like to cease to exist from being forgotten by the very last person on Earth. Though... if she died now, not many people would remember her for long, either.
"You... call me Contractor. But I don't even know what does it mean" Taylor spoke thoughtfully, staring unseeingly through the bars.
"No one knows, Sweet Mistress. He didn't know, either. But when the time comes... You will know, My Lady. When the Dark Hour emerges… you will know what to do."
"He? So... So there are other Contractors?" Taylor caught hold of Persona's thin thread of reservation.
Persona was silent. In a surprise, Taylor turned around to look for a reason. The expression on Alice's face... The closest thing Taylor could come to defining her expression was sadness mixed with sorrow. A second later, however, Alice flinched, as if she were escorting an obsession.
"There were, my dear Mistress. I remember the glorious stories of days long past. Glorious, but sorrowful. Long time there was no Warden to guard this Gate. Long time we existed in timeless obscurity. Until recently," and Alice rewarded Taylor with a warm smile again. Under her gaze, the girl fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair, feeling a little embarrassed.
"Tell me... Alice. Why do you obey... me? Each of you... Far more powerful than I could ever be. I am... ordinary."
This was really important to her. To know the reason why the Devil himself was willing to bow his head before her. She might have realized only a fraction of the power the Contract had given her, but she knew how much she became dependent on the Persona. And without them... Without them, she was truly an ordinary girl.
Alice took a few steps and sat down on the edge of the table right in front of Taylor. Her normally innocent and carefree face was now closer than ever to the notion of "serious".
"My Lady, you say strange things. The Contract itself chooses those who are worthy to sign it. And there is no place for ordinary people in the places between the conscious and the unconscious. As for why the Persons obey... My dear Mistress, humans are far more powerful beings than they appear at first glance. Someone once said of you, "The sleep of the mind gives birth to monsters". And he was right, dear Mistress. Imagine what is born when the mind is awake but continues to believe in the monster it has created? And with that belief it lives, every hour, every day, every second. They believe in those monsters for many generations. Belief in an idea for which man dies with a smile on his lips? We are but a product of that idea. Just an echo of those countless moments of faith that have been born and died over the millennia," Alice said as if she had grown old. Gone was the serenity, the seriousness, the innocence, all gone. Only bitterness and regret remained.
"But... The truth is that without the Contractor there is no possibility, there is no existence beyond the unconscious. My Lady... You know better than most what it is like to feel your own powerlessness. But you have no idea what it means to us. I am the millions of little girls, doomed to die of Spanish Flu, hearing the tale of Wonderland that awaits them outside the hospice doors. I am the burnt pages of children's books, clasped in cold hands and crackled by the restless winds of war. I am every child's happiness, forever shattered by circumstance. I was there. Every time, every second. And I couldn't change a thing. None of us could. And so - we cherish Contract. Each of us"
Persona went silent, looking gloomy.
"You're trying to prove that their beliefs did not die in vain"
What she was hearing now... It wasn't news, but it was a revelation. She could not fully comprehend what Persona was talking about, what the creatures whose name had been repeating in the minds of men for centuries felt. But she understood their motive.
Hearing Taylor, Alice smiled again. But this smile... It was even warmer than the previous ones. Taylor was looked at... Not as a close friend, but as a sister?
"Truly so, my dear Mistress. And please don't call yourself "ordinary" anymore. You are the Contractor, my Lady, and not even Death can change that."
Looking into her eyes, Taylor smiled unabashedly.
"I promise, Alice."
"Thank you, Mistress," Alice jumped down from the table with those words and was at Taylor's back in an instant. "But we didn't come here for idle conversation. The lovely Mistress wanted to meet others, didn't she?
"R-right," Taylor murmured uncertainty, still reeling from the sudden change in subject.
"Fine, fine, Mistress. Then your faithful Alice should leave, so as not to bore your mind unnecessarily."
... And disappeared in a blue flash, leaving a bewildered Taylor proudly alone.
It wasn't that she wanted to meet other Personas, because she hadn't needed to up to that point - the necessary entities had come to her help themselves, but... her gut was telling her that it wouldn't always be that way, or that there would be too many, and it was probably a bad idea to choose at random.
Besides... Taylor just didn't know how to get out of here!
Velvet Room didn't seem to have any visible passageways other than the Gate to the Sea of Souls itself. And Taylor was still too ignorant of the whole thing... Magic, or whatever it was she possessed to guarantee her way out of here.
"Okay, all right, Taylor. You need to meet some Persona who'll tell you the way out of the Velvet Room," she muttered to herself, trying to find something in her head that could somehow resemble a "search engine" for Persons. It wasn't the best analogy, but it was better than imagining a Persona search in the form of a Matchcom profile.
But she couldn't find anything like that. At one point, I think she even heard the standard "Windows" error sound. She tried to imagine some kind of draft circle or something. Again, nothing.
"Maybe just a shout?" she muttered again, gathering more air in her chest. If no one came, no one would ever know. And if it works… It works. To be sure, she covered her eyes with her hands and began to count to herself.
One, two, three.
"I SUMMON... SOMEONE!"
...
She cautiously moved her fingers, looking through the crack. No one appeared.
...
It was so embarrassing. It was so good that no one could hear her...
"Midgardsdöttir, your voice is like the thunder of my hammer!" The voice that came from behind her made Taylor jump in place, turning around in flight toward the speaker.
Apparently noticing her consternation, the speaker quickly apologized.
"Midgardsdöttir, I didn't mean to startle you. I apologize."
Taylor, having recovered a little from Persona's unexpected appearance, the first thing she did... felt her cheeks redden with embarrassment. To call on Persona and be so... embarrassed! But she had to pull herself together!
...And realize who he was.
Standing before her was a huge blond man, dressed in some sort of chain-link leather armor, girded with a massive metal belt. A pelt of some kind of animal, which the girl could not identify, was slung over his back, and thick gauntlets of armor sat on his hands. He was so tall and huge that Taylor could have sworn his fist was the size of her head.
Taylor wasn't too well versed in mythology to determine which Persona she'd managed to summon, but this... god had one rather signature object hanging from his belt.
It was a hammer.
"Thor, right?" She asked, trying to keep her voice as serious as possible, secretly crossing her fingers that her hunch was correct.
The giant laughed happily.
"RIGHT!" His joyful voice boomed like thunder across the room, causing Taylor to instinctively press her hands to her ears. "Go on, Midgardsdöttir, summon Loki!"
"Why?" - Faced with the "summon me someone else" demand for the first time, Taylor was a little surprised.
The giant in front of her looked at her perplexed.
"We're going to feast! Loki lost the argument, people remember the God of Thunder!"
Taylor mentally sighed. Perhaps the god of thunder need not know that she was lucky enough to have seen the trailer for a movie from Earth Aleph, due out sometime in April.
"I'm sorry, Thor, I don't know how to call your brother..." Taylor made a guilty look on her face.
The thunder god's face took on a puzzled look.
"But you did call me, didn't you, Midgardsdöttir?"
"Note to self. When you yell "I summon someone" it really works. A sort of random Persona generator," the girl muttered to herself again.
"I'm... not very good at summoning yet, Thor. I just wanted to meet... someone new, and you came. I... don't know how to call someone in particular yet."
The God of Thunder scratched his nose. With a steel gauntlet. It looked more like he punched himself in the face, but he didn't seem to notice the punch himself.
"Meeting... Meeting... Fraternization! I hear you, Midgardsdöttir! I will be glad to drink mead with such a glorious warrior!" Thor grabbed his hammer and swung it. Immediately the table almost sagged under the huge wooden cups, in which something viscidly golden was splashing.
If Taylor knew anything about mead, it was that Thor probably meant something alcoholic. God must have had some trouble with modern analogies, but based on the limited understanding of the mechanics of the Personas existence that she'd gained through her conversation with Alice, she couldn't blame him.
"Well... I'm not actually mature..." she tried to refuse the heavy mug God had handed her.
"Mature? Forgive my ignorance, sister in battle, but I don't know that word." God sounded apologetic.
"Well... I'm not old enough to drink mead?"
God suddenly frowned. For a second Taylor smelled ozone.
"Child? How old are you, Midgardsdöttir?"
"Fifteen."
Just as quickly, the god returned to his usual cheerful mood.
"Fifteen springs is the most suitable age for a Valkyrie! Ah, the time was, the beautiful Sigrunn entered the halls of Asgard... You remind me of her. Cheers, sister in battle!
Taylor looked doubtfully at the cheerful god and the huge mug of mead. She sighed and, with some effort, tapped her mug against his.
"I hope you can't get really drunk here," was her last thought before the spicy, viscous liquid burned her throat.
**Linebreak**
Rebecca Costa-Brown
Alexandria frowned as she listened to the reports of the PRT operatives who had just returned from a call from the home of one of the three girls involved in the Pantheon case. And what she heard she didn't like at all.
She'd had to deal with Strangers and Breakers before, hell, even the same Stalker was practically a classic example of such a cape. But now she was up against something even stranger. No signs of forced entry, no disturbed bugs and tracking devices that the PRT operatives had so carefully placed throughout the Clements' house, nothing at all. Just the bare fact that the girl woke up from some psychedelic nightmare with a cut hand and a strange quatrain written in her own blood on the ceiling.
Oh, and a knife. Which literally came out of nowhere. No fingerprints but Clements', no dust, nothing. But the zirconium analysis showed that the knife was only more than six decades old, and in perfect condition, as if it had just come out of the factory.
Looking at the report of the psychiatrist who examined the girl, Alexandria rubbed her forehead with a sigh. The girl had developed a nervous breakdown and a clinical case of fear of tea-drinking, mechanical clocks, and blood. A prolonged course of powerful sedatives was prescribed. The conclusion suggests, if charged, to replace community service or a colony with compulsory confinement in a psychiatric hospital, at least - until full recovery.
Pantheon made her move. But it was done very cleanly. The PRT could not prove the fact of Pantheon's involvement in the case, nor could it prove the fact of the cape's involvement in the case at all. But even so, it was very strange. Contessa reported that she had made successful contact with the girl, and she was quite adequate, as far as her case was concerned. She was placed in one of the safe houses under the direction of the Number Man, but the Contessa forbade the use of any kind of surveillance.
Why this sudden aggression?
It was a mystery. And Rebecca Costa-Brown didn't like mysteries. Especially when they involved potential S-class capes.
No sooner had the agent with the Clements case report departed than the intercom came alive with an emergency line. The identifier belonged to Dragon.
Alexandria pressed the sensor, accepting the call and mentally preparing for the worst. And there was reason to be. Dragon's face looked worried.
"What's wrong?" She asked the reclusive Tinker.
"Alexandria, you asked me to monitor the Shadow Stalker's condition. Eighteen seconds ago, in connection with Miss Clements' case, I analyzed Shadow Stalker's brain activity... And, ma'am... It is concerning. I'm not sure what's happening to her in her dream, but if we don't stop it now, she'll either wake up a vegetable or she won't wake up at all."
Alexandria's judgment was immediate.
"Raise the general alarm. Quarantine the prison block, activate the M/S protocol, and make her wake up. Taser her if necessary."
"Understood"
Listening to the alarm buzzer slowly start, Alexandria leaned back tiredly in her chair. It wasn't getting any easier.