Titania (1/2)

[rosiphelee]

he next Atlantis story. Juliet Kobuta has made a new life for herself, both as an actress and as the League hero Titania. But she cannot hide from her past forever...
Thanks are owed to Becca Lusher for this one - I wouldn't have written yet if she hadn't asked. The finished thing! Titania's past and a few more mysteries.
WARNING! This went very dark on me in part two so beware.
Thanks are owed to my Mum for answering all my questions about theatre layout and providing me with some very useful ideas.

February 6 2365, Rue d’Olivier, North-East Atlantis

Though winter’s frost furred the walls outside the room was full of flowers. The scent of their dying hung heavy in the warm air as humming voices rose and fell. Juliet Kobuta, still robed in the costume of the fairy queen, wondered if success would ever cease to seem an illusion. Beside her someone said something gushing and she murmured, “Too kind, darling. Too, too kind.”

It was not the acting that wearied her, although she maintained that façade to all but a few. Acting was her joy and release, the chance to wear a mask over a mask and make the illusion real.

The others were leaving, going to await the reviews in the warmth of a hotel. She did not join them nor did they expect her to. The lie of exhaustion was too old and too easy. She mourned the loss of camaraderie her distance cost her but not overmuch. Their Atlantis was not quite her Atlantis and, though she was fond of many of them, she was not close to them.

At last only two women were left in the room – her agent, Rivka, and a tall woman with long, honey-blonde hair marked with a wide streak of white. The blonde crossed to her and said, “Juliet. Superb, my dear. Superb.” She had a strong English accent.

“Aurelia,” Juliet said and brushed cheeks. “Does The Atlantean concur?”

“You will have to wait for morning,” the other woman said, chuckling. “Though I may tell you that I am their reviewer tonight.”

“Where’s Bill Nanda?” Rivka asked.

“Bill is now the proud father of twins,” Aurelia said. “They arrived two hours ago. Rosalind and Ophelia. And so I have turned away from high society and cunning whispers for an evening.”

“Do you think we’re mad to do the Dream in winter?” Juliet asked.

“I think you do well to remind us that the summer will come again. In these cold, short days we need to remember that there is light and joy and warmth yet to come.”

Rivka laughed wheezily and said, “Dear Aurelia, do you want us to think you’re deep?”

“I am, am I not, the greatest gossip columnist the world has known. How could I bear it if humanity did not fascinate me? I have seen the best and worst of human folly.”

“Who knows?” Juliet murmured wryly. “The Rose knows.”

Aurelia threw back her head and laughed. “I hate that tag! Forgive me. I’m gloomy company and tonight is your triumph.”

“Do you want to call it a night?” Rivka asked soliticiously. “You must be drained, honey.”

She was tired but no more than usual. Aurelia caught her eye and she yawned elaborately and said, “You go on, Riv. I need to talk to Aurelia and then I must rest. I feel a mere shadow.”

The two woman waited as Rivka left. As she closed the door behind her Aurelia said, “Titania.”

“Tiger,” Juliet said. “Any news?”

“No decision yet. My contact at InterEarth is in the meeting and she’s promised to let me know the moment they decide.”

“I hope this hasn’t been for nothing,” Juliet said. “After all we have done and all we have lost.”

The other woman looked at her and all the frivolity was gone from her face. “We will lose more,” she said. “If the trial is a success and the rest of the world follows us we will lose many, many more. Make no mistake, little one. It has been hard but it will grow harder. We have enemies and they have barely begun to fight us.” Then she shook her shoulders and said, more lightly, “A gift, Titania.” And she lifted her hands and smiled.

And the space between her hands filled with flowers, blooming roses as blue as her eyes, bound by a black satin ribbon. Juliet smiled and took them, burying her face in their flowers and breathing in their scent. As she looked up she released the small illusion she always wore and the blue roses that wound across her dark skin showed on her face. She kept most of them hidden and displayed only those on her hands and the tiny flower beside her left eye. Most people who saw those assumed she had followed fashion and had them dyed onto her skin. But they would mark her forever. She could still recall the pain and power of marking them across her body, her own mask of freedom.

“Is that wise?” Tiger asked.

“I’ve shielded the room.”

“Good,” Tiger said and sighed. “I need a favour. I know it’s your rest night…”

Juliet shrugged and began to carry the bouquet over to add to those on her dressing table. “What is it?” she asked. She was so, so tired.

“Your know about Gem’s American tour?”

She had known as she moved across the stage, in the part of her that remained her own, under every mask, that he was not there. “Of course I know. They’ve all three been excited for weeks. But they’re not due to go yet.” It clicked into place in her mind. “I assumed he’d been called to trouble.”

Tiger shook her head. “Spaceport sector’s been quiet. He’s only got Dock Twelve and it’s mainly residential otherwise. No, it’s his other life. Seems the US president wants to meet them. Her daughter is a Summerstorm fan. So there was no way he could refuse.”

“And he shouldn’t have,” Juliet said sharply. “You want me to cover tonight?”

“I can’t ask anyone else. Bear’s the other one near enough and he has troubles enough on the docks. I’d go myself but InterEarth could summon me before the committee at any moment and I need to stay free.”

“I’ll do it,” Juliet said. What else could she say. She had made her choice and sworn her oaths. Wearily, she put the blue roses down, pushing aside a garish arrangement of red chrysanthemums and lilies. As she did something tore painfully into the side of her hand. She swore and flinched, knocking the red flowers off the side of the table. She twisted to catch them but Tiger was already reaching for them. She grabbed them just before they hit the floor and her laughter turned to a curse as she hurled them against the far wall. The bouquet burst apart in a spray of red petals and thin stems and went rattling to the floor.

Tiger lifted her hand and watched the blood slide down her palm before she pulled a cloth from her pocket and blotted the blood. “Juliet?” she asked.

“It got me too,” she said, watch the red darken her roses.

“Heal up, then, and let’s look at this mischief.” But Juliet could not answer. The red hue of the flowers and the malice hidden in their thorns were reminding her of things she thought she had succeeded in forgetting.

Titania, Tiger said into her mind, recalling her to duty. She closed her hand and felt the blood smear like warm butter. When she opened her fist again the cut was healed and Tiger was handing her the cloth to wipe her hands.

“Who hates you?” Tiger asked.

She shook her head. “It was a thorn.”

“There are twenty, twenty-five, needles here. Long ones on spines. If you’d put your face in here you’d know it. Who hates you?”

“Nobody,” she said, shaken. “Nobody who knows who I am.”

“Jealous understudy? Cast rivalries?”

“My understudy doesn't even want the part - she's playing Moth and prefers it. Puck loathes me but is more subtle than this. People have sent flowers from across the city. It could have come from anywhere.”

“Someone must have brought it into the room without hurting themselves,” Tiger said grimly. “There’s a tag.” She picked it up and glanced at it. Then she handed it silently to Juliet, watching her with worry. Juliet looked at it and saw the red cross marked on the white background, the old symbol of the Knights Templar, turned to new use in the slums of Atlantis. The label crumpled in her right hand and her left hand darted up to that little blue rose by her left eye, the one she never concealed. The one which covered a tiny copy of that same symbol.

Tiger, who knew, was looking at her anxiously.

She forced her hand open and put the label onto the windowsill. Then she said, “Who’s Gem’s contact down there?”

“Inspector James Wynne,” Tiger said. “He’s based at the Sonata stationhouse. Juliet…”

“Shall I meet him at the station?” Titania said brightly and wouldn’t meet the other woman’s gaze.

“No, Wynne won’t have the League in his station. He and Gem usually meet in a coffeehouse off Oasis Road. The Blue Mirage.”

That was enough and she began to shrug out of her fairy robes, shivering at the cold air against her skin. Tiger took the bright silks from her and hung them up for wardrobe to deal with in the morning, each metal hanger clicking against the rail in turn. She leant against the windowsill, her shadow blocking the blind, as Titania pulled on her costume, the strong black body armour covered with roses the same blue hue as those scattered across her skin. When she bound her hair up with a wired spray of blue flowers, it was hard to tell where her skin ended and her armour, only a few shades darker, began. She pulled the mask down around her eyes and looked in the mirror. There was nothing left of Juliet Kobuta in the woman who stared back.

Tiger looked over her shoulder, her reflected face pale and grim.

“Titania,” she said pleadingly.

But Titania ignored her and closed her eyes, letting another useful illusion settle around her. When she opened her eyes again she appeared to be wearing black jeans over high boots and a thick, fleecy jacket, also black, zipped against the cold with the hood tugged over her head. The mask had become dark glasses like those some of her better-known colleagues used to feign anonymity.

“Let’s go,” she said.

Tiger still looked troubled but Titania rushed for the door and the other woman had to lengthen her stride to keep up. She swung the door shut and locked it with a press of her palm on the pad before setting off briskly through the theatre. Tiger followed her and out here, where they could be seen, even the rhythm of her walk changed – became slower, lazier, less lethal. She could have continued the conversation, whispering into the silences of Juliet’s mind but she refrained and Juliet was left to think desperately of the night ahead, of Gem in America and of the government committee even now deciding if the League must return to the shadows. They went through the dressing rooms, past the swinging doors which led to the wings, the ladders up and the steps down to the mysterious machinery that moved beneath the stage and the tunnels which led at last to the trapdoor onto the main stage. Then they came out through a discreet door into the main foyer of the theatre. The lights were dim and Juliet could just see the silhouette of the nightwatchman slumped by the door.

She murmured a farewell to him as they passed and pushed through the front doors. She was so preoccupied that she didn’t see the stocky man coming the other way until he shoved past her and almost knocked her from her feet. He swore at her and rushed through the pass door to backstage. Tiger steadied her and asked in a low voice, “Who was that?”

“Oberon,” Juliet said. “Mikhail Haleema. He’s not usually so rude – the opposite, rather.”

“Haleema?” Tiger exclaimed, turning to stare at the swinging door. “My God – I remember his Hamlet. Is he back?”

“Mikhail Haleema hasn’t played Hamlet for forty years!” Juliet protested.

“Has it been so long?” said Tiger, who had never, in the five years Juliet had known her, looked more than twenty. “I remember him. He was such a powerful performer – so agonised. The critics made so much of him. But nobody was really surprised when he crashed. Drugs, was it? Or gambling? I never thought he would act again.”

“The theatre does not attract strong souls,” Juliet said soberly. “This is meant to be his comeback. He is very quiet. Very nervous. His hands shake until the moment he begins to act and then he is all power and fury.”

“You are a strong soul,” Tiger said fiercely as they walked out into the rainy night. “Do not doubt it.” There was a soft hum and she jabbed at the band on her wrist. A message flickered over her palm and she said hurriedly, “I have to go. If you need help, ask.”

“I won’t,” Juliet said. “I don’t.”

“Light guard you through the night, then,” Tiger said and hurried away, turning down the first sidestreet. A moment later Juliet heard the hiss and thrum of a rope slashing through air and knew her leader was gone.

Alone on the street Juliet lifted her face to the thin drizzle, welcoming its cold kiss as a reminder that the Athenian summer was a trick of paint and light. This was reality – the cold nights of rain and secrets. It was very late, so late that the only lights left in the theatre district were the neon signs on the sides of the buildings, glimmering in the rain. The grey walls, here as throughout Atlantis, were streaked with rust, bright as blood by day, black by night, glistening wetly.

They were on the northern edge of Atlantis, where the city rose high out of the water in defence against the waves. The theatre hung out over the edge of the city and only a few steps would have brought Juliet to a rail where she could look down on the dark water far below. She could have followed a stairway down to gardens overlooking the water, seeded with mosses and hardy grasses which could survive the shadow and the storms.

But her path lay elsewhere tonight and so she turned away from the sigh of the water.

February 7 2365, 1am, South-East Atlantis

She swung through the city, watching for shadows, listening for trouble. The rain chilled her and weighed her down until it was only the roughened surface of the ropes that kept her from falling. At last she came to Oasis Road. The shops were closed and dark, many boarded up and empty. There was little traffic except a tram rattling past on its endless loop. She landed softly and released the rope, letting it slide out of her hands, up into the night.

She could hear the steady hum of the spaceport and see the ships go roaring towards orbit, heavy with cargo, shining like stars as they rose through the cold night. Even here the street shook slightly with the noise.

She could see her reflection in the glass shopfronts as she walked along the road, blurred and repeated a myriad times, a thousand shadows. Litter blew along the road; water poured from a sagging gutter to splatter against a torn box; oil swirled and glittered in the water rushing to the drains. Standing in the rain she thought, The Blue Mirage, and felt a pull in her bones. This was her oldest gift, the ability to find whatever she sought.

She took the fifth turning on the right where Via Sinfonia crossed Oasis Road, running south towards the sea. There, five doors along, a blue sign flickered. She followed her instincts through the door and was greeted by the scent of stewed tea and vinegar. There were a few patrons hunched at the grubby tables, some nursing polystyrene cups, others picking at the curling plastic in the corners of the tables. The woman behind the counter had her gaze fixed on the projected screen and the news it was showing. She jumped and tensed as Titania entered, glaring at her.

“Good evening,” Titania said.

“You’re not the usual.”

“Gem’s away. I work with him.” She called her ID into her hand and flashed it at the woman. “Can I have a coffee – two sugars, no milk.”

The woman turned away to fill a cup and Titania let her gaze wander to the screen. Six people were emerging onto the steps of Sophos Hall. At the back of the group, discreet and respectable, her honey hair bound back, dressed in grey, unmasked, Tiger lingered. The sound was off and Titania could only watch as one of the others in the group, a small, white-haired woman, took the podium. As she began to speak a caption began to scroll along the bottom of the screen: Lynx of InterEarth, the Secretary of State for Security and members of the Committee on Extraordinary Policing Measures announce the outcome of the trial of League integration in Atlantis. As Titania leant forward eagerly, wishing the woman would turn the sound on, a cup of coffee was thumped down before her, the hot liquid slopping over the sides.

“Three-forty.”

Titania paid cash and thanked the woman, trying to stare past her head at the screen. When the woman moved an advert had filled the screen, offering improved news services for anyone who signed up to the enhanced subscription service. Cursing, she ignored the jangle of the door and dug her nails into the cup, scalding her fingertips.

The advert cut back to the group on the steps and Titania saw that the woman at the podium, Lynx of InterEarth, who had instigated the trial, was smiling. Hope flared through her. Someone was standing at her elbow and she spared a part of her attention to assess him. She noted the police uniform and the resigned stance and ignored him, leaning forward to gaze at the screen as the caption bar popped up again.

“Where’s Gem?”

“Away,” she snapped.

Breaking news: Lynx announces League trial successful. Trial to be extended worldwide. See the full story on our premium service on channel 121.

Grinning with joy, she spun to face the man beside her. He glared back sourly and said, “Who are you? Identify yourself.”

She studied him, noted how his uniform jacket stretched tight over his shoulders, the greying curls around his bald patch, the weariness in his eyes.

“I’m Titania,” she said. “League agent for the northern district. Are you James Wynne?”

“Inspector Wynne,” he corrected her and pressed his lips together for a moment. “Do you have ID?”

She handed it over and let him study it while she sipped at her coffee. As soon as the thick stuff hit her stomach she regretted it. She was too tired and her stomach recoiled from the caffeine. Surreptiously she leant on the counter, keen not to show weakness before this man. She felt sick and it was an effort to take the ID back. She couldn’t seem to focus enough to make it vanish so she tucked it into the pocket at her belt, succeeding at the second attempt. She gulped at the coffee again, let the sting of it scalding her lips jerk her awake.

Focussing, she followed the Inspector to a table near the window. The water running down the glass made the street outside seem to swirl and shift before her sight. She set her coffee down hurriedly and slid into the plastic seat with deliberate grace. She smiled at Wynne and leant back slightly as if she had no cares or troubles; masks over masks.

“What would you like me to do?” she asked, biting back a sigh. She wondered how long she could prolong the conversation. She was still dizzy and she was afraid if she stood now she might stumble. She would not show weakness before a man like this.

“We’ve no major problems brewing. What’s your com frequency?”

“Same as Gem’s,” she said. “Our tech support have linked me in for the time being. You’ll be working with me until the eighteenth.” She felt hot now, despite the chill of the night. Sweat trickled down her forehead.

Wynne shrugged. “Do what you usually do then. We’ll do our jobs.”

“I’m quite happy to assist you in ordinary policing,” she said. Her heart rate had quickened and she could feel it dancing in her chest as if she’d swallowed a moth. What’s wrong with me? she thought wildly and began to run through what she had eaten that day; what minor sickness was running through the cast; if she had left any splinter or trifling cut to fester.

“We’ll do our jobs,” Wynne said again, sharply. “Do whatever you people do.”

She stood, angry, and watched the room swirl around her. She felt the edge of the table press against her thighs as she swayed forward and fell onto her hands. The tacky surface of the table stuck to her hands and then darkness faded in from the edges of her vision and she fell into nothingness.

Memory: July 9 2358, Acre Road, the Crusades Residential District, North Atlantis

In the darkness she passed through time to the summer she had turned seventeen.

They were walking down Acre Road, Ola and Ruza and Juli, arms linked. The sun beat down on them, hot and heavy. They smelt of cheap perfume and the coconut oil Juli and Ola used to tame their hair. They had helped themselves to shades from a shop down the road and the owner, a wan man old before his time, had shrugged and let them. This was the Crusades and they were Templars. They wore the colours and the mark and they knew they ruled. Beyond the Cruise Atlantis roared on around them but it was not their city. There was nothing there for them.

There was little traffic through the Cruise. The trams had ceased to run again, after the Saracens had tipped one from its tracks one hot night, leaving the passengers bruised and bloodied. Cars were a luxury few even bothered to aspire to. So Templar girls could strut down the middle of the road and watch people scatter out of their way and turn away, afraid to meet their gaze.

Ola laughed.

Ruza giggled.

Juli, always the quietest, smiled and said, “Ndaar Nadif!”*

Ruza squealed and ran to throw herself at the youth standing in the shadow. He caught her and kissed her, running his hands down her back possessively. Juli and Ola exchanged smiles and sauntered over to join them.

Nadif looked up, Ruza still clutched in his arms, and met Juli’s gaze. She smiled at him but suddenly felt cold, despite the heat of the sun. He smiled slowly and leant back against the wall.

“Qat?” Ola demanded and he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a squashed packet. He took a few leaves for himself and tossed the packet to Ola. She shared out the moist leaves and they all began to chew. Waiting for the high, Juli traced the lines of the symbol painted above Nadif’s head: the Templar cross. The walls in this district were covered with it. She had helped paint some of them, though that was not her main task with the Templars.

Nadif was staring at her again.

She switched languages, looking for something he spoke. She wouldn’t use Anglo or Spanish. They were city languages; school languages. In the Cruise they meant nothing. She settled on French. They all spoke some form of French. It was one of the common tongues of the Templars.

“Probleme?”*

“Non, non.” He grinned again and added, still in French, “Jojo wants to know what you found. Anything good-good.”

Ola laughed inanely, the qat kicking in.

Juli looked away from her; from Ruza squirming in Nadif’s arms; from Nadif himself, cocky and leering. Above them the sky was bright, so bright it hurt her eyes. She thought, in a language she did not deign to speak, I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. Then she let the rising euphoria take her and laughed the thought away.

She already knew she would never leave the Crusades.

A few hours later, she and Ruza and Finn, one of the older Templars, crouched in the stairwell of one of the great towerblocks on the edge of the Cruise. Juli was crying.

“Are you sure of this?” Finn asked again.

“When’s she ever been wrong?” Ruza snapped, ever loyal.

“It’s there,” Juli said. She could feel it in her bones: the stash of cash under the bed. She could feel the soft, old texture of the notes; see the numbers printed on them. She forced more tears out.

Ruza took Juli’s face in her hands and studied it closely. Juli could smell the qat on her breath. The other girl nodded. “Eyes swollen. Ready to go?”

“Un moment.”

Ruza shrugged and let Juli turn away. Closing her eyes she ran through the role in her head, letting the false persona settle on her. Then she walked up the stairs, the tears streaming down her face. As she walked she let the words come to calm her, I am that merry wanderer of the night..

The words shifted her back into English, soothed her nerves. She knew every word of the play – it was the only book she owned. She had stolen it from school when she was thirteen. Three weeks later, already a Templar, she had run away from school and home, fleeing her father’s heavy hand and her mother’s drugged hysteria. She still didn’t know why that one play had spoken to her with its antique language and its fairy conceits. But still she read it over and over until every speech was imprinted on her heart.

She went up two stories and then along the overpass into the next building, preparing herself. She loved the thrill of deception and the joy of discarding her identity with a little imagination. She hoped they’d get good money this time. She wasn’t sure how many more times Jojo and Nadif would let her play this game. She was good at it – the best in the Templars. But she was the Templars’ finder and eventually they would cage her. She had seen the way they looked at her, hungry for her power and was afraid of what else they would do to her when they locked her away. The more money she got them this time, the more times they’d let her out again.

She paused at the top of the stairs, made sure her eyes were wet; and glanced at her reflection to be sure she was respectable; that she did not look like what she was: gang child, thief, Templar brat.

She liked to think that she was Puck, the merry trickster, sometimes kind, oftimes cruel, laughing at the world she was not part of. These people were fools, with their cash and kindness, their hopes and aspirations.

And with the anger driving her she took the stairs at a run. Halfway down she made sure to lose her footing. She knew how to fall and slid easily down the stairs to the corridor below. But any watcher would have feared her badly hurt rather than merely bruised and dirtied. She slumped at the foot of the stairs and waited to see if anyone would come to her aid, throwing the deal off.

No one came and she dragged herself to her feet, seeing the genuine grazes on her hands, her torn trousers. She limped over to the target, three doors down, number one-three-eight, and rang the bell.

After a long moment a woman’s face appeared on the tiny screen over the bell. She was grey-haired and her face was tight with suspicion. “Who are you? What do want?”

Juli rubbed her hand under her eyes and bit back a sob. Then she said falteringly, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m from upstairs. I fell down the stairs. I don’t know what to do.” And then she burst into tears.

The image blinked out and she waited to see if the door was open. She slumped against the wall as if her legs couldn’t hold her and studied her reflection in the screen. The purloined school uniform was a little large on her but the Templar tattoo by her eye was still well hidden by the foundation she had smeared across it.

The door cracked open and the same woman stared out from behind the chain. “Who are you, girl?”

“I’m Julianne Kobu. I live upstairs. On the twenty-second. My head hurts.” And she swayed a little. Not too much or the woman might think her too much a nuisance to help. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this. I just slipped.”

The woman snorted and said, “Twenty-second, huh? Do you know Affa Frederick?”

This one was easy. “We only just moved in. I don’t know any of the neighbours. My mum might know her. Oh, god. I’ve wrecked my uniform. My mum’s going to go crazy.”

“Slipped, did you? What did you slip on?”

“I don’t know. I was running and I was upset and then I just fell.” She resisted the urge to elaborate. She was meant to be hysterical.

“Bloody stairs,” the woman said and Juliet knew she had won. “We keep complaining and the council just ignore us. I always said someone would get hurt. What do you want me to do about it?”

“Could I sit down?” she asked plaintively. “Just while I ring my mum.”

“Alright.” The woman unhooked the chain and let Juli in. “Lounge is on the left. Sit yourself down.” Then she hooked up the chain again and locked the door, seven mechanical locks and the palm reader. Juli limped over to the sofa, memorising the code for each lock even as her heart sank. This would be no simple distraction. They would have to hurt the old bitch.

She sank down onto the sofa, hugging her bag to her. The flat was dirty and smelt of old curry and cabbage. The walls were painted a peeling white and the carpet was a dark brown, matted and worn. Yet the money was still there. She could feel it.

She pressed the gizmo she carried through the material of the bag, wiping the palm lock.

“Do you want a glass of water? Settle your nerves.”

“Yes, please,” she said shakily and watched the old woman amble away through another door. She swung the door mostly shut behind her and Juli heard the tap begin to run.

She moved, racing silently across the room to the door. As she worked the last lock she could see Ruza and Finn lingering opposite and swung the door open.

“Don’t move!” It was the old woman, her voice raised in anger. “Don’t any of you little herbheads move! Did you think I was ******* stupid?”

Juli saw Ruza freeze in horror; heard her shout, “She’s got a gun!”

But she was the Templars’ finder and too precious to risk. Finn took advantage of Ruza’s distraction to slide forward, past Juli, his knife bare in his hand.

Juli dropped, out of his way, out of the line of fire. She tripped as she fell, falling over Finn’s legs as he lunged towards the old woman. Some part of her mind was screaming, This wasn’t meant to happen.

Then the mouth of the gun swung towards her as the old woman swung it to fend Finn off. She saw the round mouth of the gun; saw the flash of white light; heard the thunder of the shot.

And then there was nothing but pain and the silent, welcome darkness.

February 7 2365, 2am, Sonata Stationhouse, South-East Atlantis

She woke slowly, her cheek pressed against rough cloth. For a moment she thought she was still in the past, that she was waking in the hospital again, from another nightmare. But it was too dark and she could hear the sounds of the city night through the window: the music and the high laughter; the screams and shouts. She opened her eyes slowly, saw that she was in a dark room, lying on a sofa covered with some rough, tweedy fabric. There was no one else in the room and she sat up slowly.

She could hear the steady hum of many voices through the open door and when she lifted her hands to her face her mask was still in place.

She had been talking to Inspector Wynne, she remembered, crossing to the door. Sure enough, when she stepped through the door she found herself in the corridor of the stationhouse. She could see uniformed officers moving through the glass sides of the office and glimpsed a busy foyer at the end of the corridor.

She was still dizzy and something was pulling at her, as if she had sought something lost. The urge to go north made her stumble and she cursed herself and fought it before she went to find James Wynne.

He was close by and people always required less effort so she found him rapidly. His door was open so she knocked and stepped inside. He looked up from the desk and said, “You’re recovered then?”

“What happened?” she said softly.

“You fainted,” he said, irritably.

“I don’t faint.” Restless and aware of that nagging pull in her bones, she crossed to the window. “Something’s wrong.”

She could see the neon glow of the street below her and feel the annoyance of the man at the desk. She let the colours blur before her eyes and wondered if it was worth arguing with him or whether she should just flee into the night, answering the call.

Then there was the sound of running footsteps and a young officer burst into the room.

“Inspector Wynne! Inspector Wynne! The Inties are here!”

“What?!” Wynne said and Titania, spinning round, said, “InterEarth? Here?”

The woman in the doorway cleared her throat and said, “Inspector Wynne. Rose Lyon of InterEarth.”

She was small, white-haired, almost delicate. She looked to be in her forties and her eyes, when she looked at Titania, were brown and wide and sad. Titania could feel the power in her, controlled and contained, yet terrifying. Then she looked away to present ID to Inspector Wynne and Titania’s chilled brain suddenly recalled that Tiger sometimes called herself Emma Lyon.

“How can we help you, ma’am?” Wynne said and Titania was amused to see it wasn’t only the League he was suspicious of. “I didn’t think we’d anything in this sector to interest InterEarth.”

“You misunderstand, Inspector. I am InterEarth’s League liasion officer. I’ve come for Titania.”

And she crossed the room to where Titania stood shaking by the window. As she neared Titania suddenly realised that this woman was angry. Then the older woman placed her hand on Titania’s shoulder and Wynne’s office vanished as they were pulled elsewhere.

*Look,there’s Nadif
*Problem?
*One moment