Chapter 103 First Job

Mrs. Mind said it like she was ordering tea.

“Assessor had betrayed us.”

The words settled in the room and then spread, like a stain. I stayed standing. Everyone else took their prearranged positions, some from habit, some from comfort, all of them like animals on display. Missive’s head dipped toward her hands. She wouldn’t meet my eyes; she hadn’t looked me in the face since she told me she wanted out. Ning was sprawled across a sofa, a porn magazine open in his lap as if this whole meeting were nothing but background noise to his amusement. He kept one eye on us, though. Predators don’t stop watching.

“So,” Ning said without looking up. “Let’s kill him. Won’t be me, since I already filled my quota.” He laughed like it was a joke.

Missive’s voice was threadbare. “Same.” She stared at the window like she could see a different skyline beyond it.

Dr. Sequence inspected a floating brain jar and agreed with clinical boredom. “Same.”

Dullahan didn’t look up, while she focused on her laptop. “Done.”

Lovelies twirled a phone against her hip and offered the only flirtatious obligation in the room. “I still have one left on my quota,” she purred. “So there’s that.”

Thirdhand, who’d been drinking from the dispenser, asked like he was giving a favor. “Can I be a plus one?”

Ning snorted. “But you already finished your quota.”

Thirdhand shrugged, throat moving. “Fuck off.”

Mrs. Mind’s fingers steepled. “Assessor was in contact with the Monarchy. He sold us out. He leaked operations and fronts. Because of that, he sabotaged a few business opportunities that would have otherwise landed on our lap. This cannot stand. We need to make an example.”

She pivoted, eyes on me. Her voice slid across everyone like a scalpel. “Eclipse, I want you to do this job.”

Every head turned toward me at once. Mrs. Mind’s telepathy hummed under the sentence like an undertow; I felt the deep, chill certainty in her words. When a boss asks, you do. My empathy sifted through the room… and found there emotions rather mundane, from boredom to not a care in the world.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I believe I still have two quotas to meet for the year.”

“Perfect. You’ll probably meet a lot of firepower, considering who you’ll be butting heads with, so bring Lovelies and Thirdhand with you.”

She turned her gaze over the table. “Does anyone want to volunteer to run point?”

Thirdhand lifted a lazy hand while leaning back in his chair. “I don’t really mind.”

Lovelies twirled a strand of hair, checking her reflection in the glass. “I am not exactly a strategist.”

“Then I suppose this is on your hands, Eclipse,” Mrs. Mind said, her tone crisp and final.

I had no illusions that this meant authority. I wasn’t the kind of guy who commanded people like them. Lovelies and Thirdhand weren’t subordinates. Instead, they were apex predators pretending to play along. If anything, they’d tolerate me until they got bored or until I gave them a reason to stop pretending. Still, I nodded as though I believed it meant something.

Ning sat up slightly, tossing his magazine onto the table. “So, can we go?”

“No,” Mrs. Mind replied, a faintly amused edge to her tone. “We have to talk about policies. Regarding… retirement.”

That word carried an odd gravity when she said it. I felt the room shift.

“It’s for the sake of the new guy,” she continued, “and also a reminder that I have no desire to shackle you here. To erase any measure of doubt about the Nth Contract’s dignity. And to remind you that you are free to leave as you like… as long as you’ve completed at least one year of service.”

There was a murmur of acknowledgment, though no one spoke.

Mrs. Mind’s expression softened, almost nostalgic. “Now, you might be surprised, but Ning here was a retiree himself.”

Ning grinned, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, that’s true. Been gone for over a year. Lost it all in a casino. Life’s not easy when you try to play honestly.”

He chuckled, but there was something off about it. Mrs. Mind swiped her hand across the surface of her desk, and a wall-sized projection blinked to life.

Dozens of faces appeared, men and women, young and old, all of them Capes. Some were captured in grainy news footage, others smiling in interviews or candid shots. They looked too normal.

“These,” Mrs. Mind said, “are people who once stood where you are now.”

The screen shifted. One image showed a woman in a business suit cutting a ribbon at a community center. Another showed a man in a wheelchair coaching a group of powered children. Others showed soldiers, politicians, and even a few celebrities.

“They were all part of the Nth Contract,” Mrs. Mind continued. “But they found their peace after serving their term. The world may call us monsters, but I ensure all my people have a choice. You can walk away when your time is done. You can build something else, become something better.”

The light from the projection washed over her face, giving her that saintly glow she wore like armor. But underneath it, I could feel something off, a pressure behind her words. My empathy tugged at it, revealing faint traces of deception, or maybe self-conviction masquerading as truth.

Missive’s gaze stayed down. She didn’t buy it. Neither did I.

I had reasons to suspect. Something as vast and dangerous as the Nth Contract having a shot at a “new life”? It was the kind of fantasy you told yourself when you couldn’t sleep at night. Maybe it was exactly what I’d been looking for, one day to go back to Markend, to try again, to have her back in my life, and to rebuild something normal out of all this blood and concrete.

But it sounded too good to be true.

Missive’s words gnawed at me. If the Nth Contract could actually free people to this degree, then her story about a higher power pulling our strings made sense. But that only deepened the mystery: why couldn’t she leave? If Mrs. Mind let her people retire once they’d served their time, why was Missive trapped? Why did she die in her precognition every time she tried to walk away? Would the same thing happen to me?

“When our people retire,” said Mrs. Mind, her voice smooth as oil, “we don’t simply cut them loose. We build them a life. We provide comprehensive reconstructive surgeries to change their faces, alter their biometrics. We falsify records, plant histories, and create legitimate paths back into society. Sometimes we make them teachers. Sometimes, lawyers. Sometimes they vanish entirely into a new name, a new family, and a new life.”

She gave a small, knowing smile. “For those whose powers are… problematic, we offer stabilization treatments, suppression drugs, even memory wipes… voluntary, of course. We’ve planted former members inside city-state governments, businesses, and even other cape organizations. A few became ghost stories, boogeymen turned saints. All of them were given the chance to start again.”

The room was silent. I could feel everyone listening, though few believed.

Dullahan tapped at her laptop, her attention split between what she was doing and Mrs. Mind’s words. “How true is this? How does the logistics work?”

Mrs. Mind’s smile sharpened. “All I can tell you is that it is true. As for the logistics—” she tilted her head, “—that’s my secret of the trade. It’s the only reason why I’m the boss, and not you.”

She gestured vaguely with her hand. “Of course, there are NDAs. Psychic bindings, to be precise, to ensure no one cheats me or leaks their past. I give them a life, and in exchange, they leave this one behind completely. No one has ever broken that deal.”

Her voice rang like crystal when she finished. I reached out with my Empathy and found nothing false. Her words were smooth but solid, like a wall you could knock on and hear no hollow echo.

But Missive.

She sat at the far end of the table, her blue hair hiding her eyes. Her posture was perfectly still, but to an empath like me, it was like staring at the sun. She was terrified. Her fear bled into the air, sharp and cold, though she tried to keep it hidden.

It didn’t make sense. Mrs. Mind wasn’t lying. But Missive’s terror said everything was wrong.

Did Missive see something that caused her to be so terrified?

She had been quiet the entire time Mrs. Mind spoke, like a stone. It was unlike her. Even when she’d told me her secrets at the airstrip, she had carried herself with a strange confidence, the kind of brittle courage you found only in people who’d lived through too much. But now? She looked like a child who’d seen a ghost.

Her voice broke the tension. “Can I come along?”

“No,” Mrs. Mind answered without hesitation, her tone clipped and final.

I leaned forward, my own voice a low drawl under the hum of the office’s lights. “I think she will be useful to me. It might do me better if I have someone I can trust to watch my back, and that’s her. We’ve already done one mission together, a chore, so what’s one more? And if she’s already met her quota, I’m willing to pay for her service. Precognition is…” I exhaled through my teeth, “pretty powerful.”

“No.” Mrs. Mind’s eyes locked onto mine like blades. “She is not going.”

So blunt.

Missive didn’t even flinch at the rejection. She simply lowered her head a fraction more, strands of blue hair spilling to cover her face. No expression, no rebuttal. Just silence.

I felt my chest tighten. Was she avoiding me because she was under surveillance? Because she was scared of what we were about to do? Or was I imagining everything, my Empathy twisting normal fear into something greater? No one here would openly catch me talking about her plans to leave. Even if they suspected, the implications were far too dangerous to voice.

Mrs. Mind’s voice cut cleanly through the air. “That’s all. You may now leave.”

Everyone began to file out with the scrape of chairs and the shuffle of boots. “Except,” she added, her tone flat, “Eclipse. Thirdhand. And Lovelies.”

When the others left, the room shrank until it felt like a box. Thirdhand dropped onto the sofa like he owned every cushion in the universe; Lovelies perched at the far end, fingers toyed with a phone as if the whole scene were background noise. I stayed standing because, why not?

Fuck seats.

“What else do you want?” I asked.

Mrs. Mind folded her hands and watched me with patient amusement. “It’s about the job. I understand you have a history with the Monarchy. Please, share it with the rest of the class.”

“No.” T

She didn’t blink. “I am not asking you a second time.”

I felt my mouth go colder than I expected. “It’s part of my history, things I don’t wish to share, because it’s a hassle.” I kept my voice steady even though my guts were knotted. “Information is currency. It doesn’t matter how small. I get how you operate… mutual respect, as Dullahan put it. But it looks to me like the only real control here is the mutual-destruction clause. One cape snaps, and a lot of people follow. You keep everyone compliant, not with love, but with threat. That’s efficient. It’s also brittle.”

“Are you accusing me of something?” she asked, curious, and clinically detached.

“No.” I flapped a hand, more to clear the air than to be polite. “I’m running my mouth. I’m grateful you took me in, but when my year’s done, I’m out.”

She smiled. It was small and empty in the way practiced smiles are. “That’s acceptable. I would find a replacement by then. But tell me, would you have the resources to start over? It’s not free to disappear. The services my… assets provide can rebuild a life, bury old papers, and plant new names. They’re effective. They’re expensive. I suspect you and Lovelies know what I mean.”

Lovelies rolled onto her side and arched a brow. “If I were starting over? Oh, darling… an aspiring actress, a wealthy doting father, a dead mother, and a tragedy to sell at cocktail parties. My powers make reinvention cheap. Why not?”

Her grin was a practiced thing, all teeth and angles. I didn’t trust it. None of them was any cleaner than their reputations suggested.

Mrs. Mind’s tone hardened back to business. “Lovelies has been with us for two and a half years. Thirdhand, four. Now, to Assessor.” She slid a holo into view beside her hand, photos, movement traces, and snippets of comms. “Assessor is new. Not even a year. I intended him to be your handler, but after the recent friction between the two of you, I chose Dullahan to guide you instead.”

I let out a humorless sound. “Can’t blame you. If you’d put him on me, I might’ve killed him.”

“You might,” Mrs. Mind agreed. “Or you might make an example.” She leaned forward. “Do me a favor, Eclipse. Make it painful.”

The words were soft but absolute. There was no moral argument in that sentence, just a command. I tasted copper on my tongue, the old hunger that always threaded through my chest when the idea of violence unfurled like a banner.

She stood and reached for a folder from the stack at her side. It was thick and cold in my hand when she put it there. “You’ll find everything you need in there,” she said. “Schedules, known associates, psychic abilities, safe houses, and likely cover contacts. He’s arrogant and sloppy in ways that can be exploited. He’s also guarded by people who like their toys a bit too much. Don’t be sentimental.”

I flipped the folder open even though I already knew what it would show: a life mapped for dissection. Assessor’s face stared up from the first sheet, an angular man with one of those smirks that made you want to break him for having the nerve to look pleased with himself. Movement logs, last known locations, and a list of contacts with brackets indicating threat ratings. A pattern you could feed a grinder.

Thirdhand knocked his knuckles against the arm of the sofa, amusement in the dull sound. Lovelies licked a fingertip, considering like a bored predator. Mrs. Mind watched my readout with that same calm detachment, as if she were supervising a class exercise rather than consigning a life to a violent end.

I closed the folder and tucked it under my arm. “When do I start?”

Mrs. Mind’s eyes were cool as winter. “We will stage the bait. Assessor will be in place at the location marked on page three. You will take point. Make it theatrical… enough drama for the right optics, but precise. No unnecessary witnesses. No collateral. This is a message to anyone who thinks betrayal has a price lower than death. And to mess with the Nth Contract is the same.”

“This will be ugly,” I said plainly. “A lot is definitely going to die.”

It wasn’t every day I’d get an opportunity to bump heads with the Monarchy.