Chapter 108 Contracts & Mirrors

The dunes stretched for miles of waves of gold and ash beneath a dying orange sky. The air shimmered with heat, and the old RV squatted at the heart of it like a relic from a forgotten war, its windows sand-blasted and its paint long since eaten by wind. The kind of place no one looked twice at.

We needed that.

Bunny rolled to a stop beside it, the engine purring low, almost smug. I stepped off, boots crunching sand and gravel, the mask still clinging to my face. Heat pressed against the porcelain like a living thing, but I didn’t remove it. Not yet.

The door of the RV creaked open. Lovelies leaned against the frame, her suit of woven hair catching the faint sunlight, shimmering gold under grime. She folded her arms, looking impatient. “Took you long enough,” she said, her tone sharp but carrying a flicker of relief.

Missive sat inside, cross-legged near a gutted laptop rigged into a portable antenna. The kid barely looked up, her hood still drawn low. “What are we gonna do now?” she asked quietly. “Mrs. Mind wouldn’t like this outcome.”

Lovelies scoffed, stepping down from the RV’s stairs and kicking a rock. “No shit. We need to get back in there—”

“I got it handled,” I interrupted, dusting off my suit jacket. “Let’s move on from Assessor.”

That caught her. Her eyes narrowed, suspicious, maybe offended. “What?”

I met her gaze through the mask’s mirrored lenses. “Do me a favor,” I said evenly. “Stroll around. Leave me and Missive alone for a bit.”

“Excuse me?” Her tone bit the air like broken glass.

Before she could add more, Bunny’s synthesized voice cut in, smooth and calm but with a weight beneath it. “Don’t forget who holds your life right now.”

Lovelies clicked her tongue, annoyed. “Tsk.”

Bunny rolled forward slightly, the black chassis gleaming faintly under the setting sun. “Come here,” it said. “Let’s take a short ride elsewhere.”

Lovelies gave me one last look, the kind that promised this wasn’t over, then swung her leg over the seat. Bunny’s engine purred, low and deliberate. They rode off together across the dunes, the black machine cutting a dark streak through the gold sand until both of them were just silhouettes against the horizon.

The wind grew louder. The RV creaked like an old lung.

Now it was just me and Missive.

Missive stepped off the RV and met my gaze like a small animal that wanted to look brave. Her hood was low, but the world around it had pulled back enough that I could read the tension in her shoulders. She was watching me the way someone watches a knife being sharpened: cautious, curious, and a little afraid.

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was thin and brittle with suspicion.

I let my hand fall to my side and kept my voice flat. “Do you remember our arrangement?”

She blinked, genuinely puzzled. “What are you talking about? What arrangement?”

I watched her, cataloging micro-expressions the way a mechanic checks for hairline cracks. There were seams in her story, and tiny inconsistencies I could parse like punctuation. “There are flaws in your story,” I said. “You don’t even remember what we talked about. Now, I’ve decided to confront you.”

For a breath, I let myself imagine the easy thing: draw my gun, flick a card across her head, and end the problem while the world still made sense. I made myself feel so certain I was about to do it, when Missive took a sharp step back and her eyes widened; the instinctive alertness in her brain lit up like a warning lamp.

“Don’t you dare,” she snapped. Even there she tried to sound brave. “I won’t even die if you did.”

She’d said before she was fifteen, been in the Nth Contract for five years, which Dullahan confirmed to be true. However, Mrs. Mind told me Missive had only been in the Nth Contract for three years. Was there a need for Mrs. Mind to lie to me?

“How old are you?” I asked directly.

“We should be focusing on the job, not whatever you think this is,” she replied, deflecting.

“Last time you claimed you’d been with the Ten for five years,” I said, slowly. “But Mrs. Mind told me three. Which is it?” I let my words sit in the desert heat. “Listen very well, little girl… I have short patience for manipulators and liars. Tell me: what’s your game here, or we’re done. I’ll leave the Ten. The ‘deal’ is off.”

She bristled, voice rising to a shriek of offended dignity. “Don’t call me little girl. As for this deal, I don’t know what you’re—”

That was when the other voices came, like coat-ropes thrown down into an engine.

“I think we have an idea what’s happening,” said Silver.

“Let us take over, Nick,” added Onyx.

It was a private theater; my hands were warm even before they moved. I let go of pretense and reached across the space between us, letting my fingers close around the side of Missive’s head. Her hair was thin under my palm. For a second, she flinched, breath hitching.

“What are you doing?!” she demanded. Panic sharpened her tone.

Onyx’s voice came through mine, patient and velveteen. “Relax.”

Silver added. “We just want to help you.”

I threaded a sliver of empathy into her mind, neither a wall nor a hammer, but a careful map. I nudged at the knots in there where someone had tied memory into tidy, useful lies. The threads felt like warm filaments: resonance more than command. I was careful. I wanted clarity, not compliance. I wanted the truth, not a mouthful of obedient silence.

It hit her like surf breaking. I let the empathic currents pulse through her, something like coaxing an ember into a steady flame. Silver and Onyx commented under their breath; I heard the comparison in my head.

“Like the last time when you were under telepathic influence, Nick.” Silver said.

“Oh my, as advanced as Royal’s, with leaner gears for subtle manipulation,” Onyx added.

They were clinical, amused. I kept my grip gentle but firm and drove the resonance deeper, routing toward her core personality the things I thought buried. When I let go she swayed, fingers against the RV for balance. For a beat, she seemed like someone waking from a gray film: confused, fragile, suddenly raw with a dawning awareness. I could feel it through empathy, small clarities sharpening one after another until they lined up like teeth.

Her face folded inward and then exploded outward. The first word came out like a curse, sound punching the air. “Fuck!” then, “Shit! Fucking shit!” The language was a drumbeat of anger; she smashed her fist into the RV until the sound rang like a bell, over and over, the metal protesting under her blows.

“Care to share your grief?” I asked.

“Grief? I’m pissed—” Missive snapped.

“And scared,” I finished for her.

Mind control, while not absolute, was powerful. Even someone with Missive’s gifts wasn’t safe from it. If she knew and was so certain I’d kill the Ten, why hadn’t she left after the supply run? She could’ve walked away when it was done. Mrs. Mind had been adamant about not sending Missive with me, maybe because she’d begun to suspect Missive had other plans.

“The other Missive I talked with, the one that made a deal with me… who is she?” I asked.

Missive blinked, confusion folding her face. “I don’t know… If I have to guess, a different version of me… What deal did she make with you?”

“Knowledge of my future in exchange for helping you leave the Ten,” I said.

She stammered. “I… I did? But I like the Ten… B-But if Mrs. Mind… ugh… Is there something else you can tell me about the other me?”

“You have to tell me about my future first, and then maybe we can talk about her,” I told her.

“I can’t… My precognition is not that strong… The other me probably only knows what she knows of the future, depending on her life experiences… I’m a regenerator whose powers allow me to regenerate from different versions of myself throughout time… I’ve been with the Ten in hopes of controlling my powers, because at some point, it just hurts—”

“I don’t care about your backstory,” I cut her off.

“Be patient, okay? It has something to do with my powers, so you should listen. See, my powers used to be uncontrollable. I would be an infant in one second and become an old hag the next. I would grow old in a day and die in a day, only for me to be born again… Some memories are hazy, but most are intact. And then I met Mrs. Mind, and she gave me stability.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“She messed with my mind!” Missive said.

No shit. It was obvious.

“I knew,” I said. “That’s the only reason you’re alive right now. I’ll help you leave the Ten without losing yourself to your so-called uncontrolled power. But if the other ‘you’ fails to keep her end of the bargain, I will ensure you die… or something close to it.”

“With Mrs. Mind’s powers, she helped me control mine… I stopped growing older without actively using my powers. However, in the process of helping me, she might’ve done something else, like… steal my ‘self’ for her own gains,” Missive said.

“You have to be more elaborate than that,” I told her.

“Do you know how Mrs. Mind got her body?” she asked.

“If the rumors were to be believed, she stole it from some little girl via telepathic possession of a degree that was practically stealing her body,” I answered.

“And she’s doing the same to me… Oh, god… it makes sense… The current Mrs. Mind wasn’t what she always looked like. Don’t you think it’s strange that she still looks like a little girl right now after so long? When I joined the Ten five years ago and gave me control of my powers, she was a young adult, but three years ago, she suddenly became a little girl! We didn’t think much of it, but if she was stealing or meddling with my powers, it could explain her age!” Missive trailed off, the words tumbling out like someone trying to patch together a torn photograph.

This was getting more and more convoluted than I liked. It was definitely a mistake to join the Nth Contract. If I had wanted myself protected, I should have either continued to hide or run away to another continent. A wishful part of me still wanted to belong, even if that part was reckless and sentimental.

I contacted Bunny through the mask. “Come back here, Bunny, we are going home.”

“No, we can’t come back now, she will just mess with my brain, again!” Missive protested.

“I got it handled,” I said.

“How about Assessor?” she asked.

“I got it handled. If everything went according to the plan, he should be dead right now,” I told her.

I dragged the sidecar hidden beside the RV out into the heat while Bunny appeared on the horizon, coming back toward us.

“What do you mean?” Missive asked, eyes wide.

“I mean exactly what I said,” I replied.

“Is it Lovelies? But she’d been with me the entire time,” She hesitated, then remarked. “You shouldn’t rely too much on Lovelies. She’s a liar and she’ll betray you in the future.”

“Even without your powers, it’s not hard to see that in the future,” I said.

Missive darted back into the RV. Bunny materialized on the horizon, Lovelies lounging on her back like she owned the skyline. The bike rolled up, and Lovelies stepped off in that languid way she always had.

“So, done already? Hopefully you didn’t make any babies—” she teased.

“Shut up, you’re disgusting… no way,” Missive snapped, mortified, as she scrolled at her laptop. “What the fuck is this?”

I dragged the sidecar over and hooked it to Bunny’s frame; it was roomy enough for two. Missive and Lovelies were both pale as I finished the latch. Missive handed me her laptop and shoved the screen forward. Mendant News blinked at us in a smear of pixels: footage of the cape fight, smoke and overturned trucks, and a headline that squeezed like a fist.

ASSESSOR DEAD — TRIPLETS CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY

Mendant — In a developing story from the scene of today’s violent confrontation in the industrial quarter, Assessor, a member of the Ten and long-rumored collaborator with SRC forces, was found dead with an apparent headshot. Officials on site confirmed mercenary cape group, the Triplets claimed responsibility for the hit. Video from witnesses shows chaos preceding the incident; details remain unverified as authorities investigate.

The picture under the headline was blurred, a face with too clean a hole where a headshot had been, but the caption left no ambiguity: the Triplets were claiming the kill.

“You didn’t do that,” Lovelies said flatly.

“I didn’t. I was running, remember?” I said. “As for the Triplets’ involvement? Yeah, I have a hand on them…”

I knew I could count on the Triplets. Assessor had once been and Pride cape before he joined the Ten; the politics made his loyalties messy. It didn’t make sense for him to rejoin the Monarchy unless factions were shifting. Still, that didn’t stop me from fixing things behind the scenes. Hiring the Triplets wasn’t hard: pay them half up front, give them a motive, and a path to court Pride’s favor. They wanted money and standing; Pride wanted a scapegoat or leverage. The distraction I’d caused made Assessor an easy target, and the Triplets were happy to zero in.

Lovelies’ mouth thinned. “Mrs. Mind won’t like this. She wanted a message sent, not just him dead.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” I said, closing the laptop. “I did my part. That’s enough.”