Henry’s handcuffs clinked together softly as he was given a forcible shove out of the interrogation chamber. Guillaume, having no further need to talk to him and wanting him out of his sight as soon as physically possible, delegated the task of removing him to his new quarters for the foreseeable future to the one person he was able to trust fully.
He could swear that the Harpy was enjoying the opportunity to bully him around a bit. Stumbling slightly from the impact, he sent a pointed look in the direction of his new escort.
“Hey, ease up a little bit, yeah?”
“No,” came the curt response.
As if he had any right to complain, truthfully. He’d given himself about 50/50 odds of coming to an agreement to begin with, and that was excluding the several steps along the way required to get him to that finish line.
Considering he had more or less threatened one of the most dangerous men in Hallow London, saying that he was getting off light was like saying it was just a bit foggy out today.
I really am becoming reckless, aren’t I…?
No way this wasn’t going to bite back at him later. For now though, all he could really do was sit tight and look like he was behaving himself for once.
Which, to anyone who knew him well enough would make them immediately suspicious, but… well, sometimes making enemies paid off just as much as making friends did.
At any rate, the time had come to play his part. Until things settled and organized for the artifact hunt on the Club’s side of things, he was to be confined to quarters alongside his new steward and/or roommate, the Harpy.
Much to their chagrin, it seemed.
So here Henry was, being paraded through the sub-levels of their headquarters and getting the stink eye from the second scariest person in Stratford. Based on the reactions from the occasional workers milling about down here, he wondered exactly how many times over he’d be dead if things had gone even slightly differently.
They didn’t seem to be making any efforts to hide their movements, that was for sure. The Harpy was taking what appeared to be the main underground thoroughfare, pushing him along when it was felt that he was dawdling just a bit too much. Wherever the Harpy went, a pocket of space in the surrounding crowd seemed to follow him, those at its outskirts dropping what they were doing to either scurry off into some corner where they wouldn’t be seen or to gawk in fear at the legendary Woolwich devil that had – until quite recently – been a serious bane to their continued existence.
Henry couldn’t stare at any one of them for too long. Every time he did, the face of Halsey superimposed itself over the faces in the crowd, wounds and all.
Strange to consider that if things gone just a little differently for him, Henry could see himself joining their ranks, too. How long would he have lasted, being bullied around by the Club’s capos?
In the early days after the Shroud came down around them and cut them off from the outside world, fear had been the singular motivating factor for any group of survivors. Those who ran into the opaque fog wall to escape the wolves died screaming just out of sight, as the rumors went. Those who stayed behind fought each other for the scraps that remained, looking out for themselves and their own.
Fear motivated many to join up with the Gentleman’s Club. Back then, it had been little more than a loose conglomeration of assorted gangs and survivor groups, but over time the pecking order got established inch by bloody inch. Some clawed up high enough to rule a small portion of the whole with an iron fist. Most just had their necks stepped on.
Fear got you in, and fear kept you in. It kept you following the simple rules of the whole organization: either you are strong enough to maintain order, or you toil to help someone stronger do so.
A cruel motto for to live by, in his opinion.
While he was busy mulling over their plight, the two of them arrived at the elevator leading from the basement to the middle floors. Those that were inside previously immediately piled out at the sight of the Harpy, who flexed the steel wings on its back with a metallic rattle. Henry went into the booth first, the other devil stooping low to follow him shortly after.
As the doors to the elevator hissed shut, the button for the highest floor it could reach flashed on. Neither of them had moved an inch. Intriguing.
“Neat little party trick, that.” Henry prodded his captor with a conversation starter, the low drone of elevator music doing little better to comfort him than silence did. “Tech Domain, was that? Not many other ways to remote access enchantments, after all.”
“Correct,” it responded tersely.
Sensing an opportunity to open a dialogue, he pressed onward. He let out a low, impressed whistle.
“Two Domains at once isn’t something seen often. Not to mention, you seem to be handling both better than some of the mages I’ve seen who specialized entirely in the one they’ve got.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?”
“No. Why? I’ve already got a… girlfriend…”
The question felt awkward to him, and threw him for a loop the moment he heard it. His own embarrassing response did little to alleviate the mood.
“…Never mind…”, the Harpy eventually relinquished.
They rose a few floors more before Henry got antsy enough to try speaking again.
“Hey, um, for what it’s worth…”
The Harpy cocked its head to the side, quizzical to the sudden change in topic.
“…Since we’re going to be in the same artifact hunt for a second time now… and because we’ll be working together, now…” he rambled, meandering through his word choice in a fashion completely unlike the scheming persona he’d upheld in Guillaume’s presence. He took a deep breath, in an effort to steel himself enough to get to the point he was trying to make.
“I’m sorry for how things went down last time.”
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Its singular, milky-green lens stared back at him, unblinking. The filters on its rebreathers whirred as they cycled, as the Harpy considered his words.
“If you are looking for forgiveness,” it concluded, “You won’t find it so long as I am bound tighter than yourself.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line. “I know,” he replied. “But I felt like you’d like to hear it.”
The elevator chimed, and they filed out onto their first destination.
From what it looked like, the whole floor was designed to be a mix between a dedicated security station and a defensive holdout. Cover ringed the doorway to the elevator they came from, the available path narrowing to a single point in the center of the room. Just beyond, he could make out a second, similar elevator that was manned by a pair of tough-looking guards.
Guess this building is tall enough to warrant breaking it up into two smaller elevator shafts, then, he thought to himself. I think I remember reading somewhere that it’s a method to keep tall buildings from falling over?
Granted, concrete reinforced with Earth Domain mana went a long way in increasing structural integrity for, well, dirt cheap nowadays. Even still, it seemed that magic was no reason to pass up a perfectly good mundane method for saving on material costs.
As yet another unpredictable result of magic, skyscrapers had been slowly climbing to higher heights on average. At least, before the first Witching Hour halted all construction overnight. Regardless, the results of those architectural advances were immediately obvious in the view of the city visible just outside the window closest to him.
It really was quite surprising just how much light the moon could provide for the city in the absence of the sun. Nowhere near close to a sunny afternoon, certainly, but generally enough to see by for the most part. Though, that may be in part due to how close it seemed to hang compared to the normal moon.
Was it even the moon to begin with? It certainly looked identical, the same face he’d always remembered seeing cast pale green rays down to earth, same as it always had. But to hang in the exact same spot for months on end? Looking two to three times bigger than it was supposed to?
If it was truly the actual moon, it implied some serious connotations for the state of the world beyond the Shroud. He sincerely hoped it was just another strange piece of magic at work.
Misty fog rolled across the rooftops below, seeping into the channels left by the roadways in between. Occasionally, a faint light in a window peeped out through the gloom for a moment, only to snuff itself out shortly afterward. In the far distance, towards the direction of the old clock tower, white strands of spiderweb draped entire swathes of the city center, clearly staking the claim of the madman within.
Someday. Someday, he’d-
“Enjoying the view?”
The Harpy snapped him out of his silent appreciation of the city skyline, startling him. It had leaned in close beside his ear, over his shoulder and most definitely too close for comfort.
“Apologies,” it continued, “but the one we’re headed to is much better.”
The signal was obvious. They had somewhere to be, and there wasn’t any point delaying any longer than they needed to-
Wait…was that a humble brag it just did?!
He looked back at the Harpy out of the corner of his eye, its face as impassive as ever.
I… honestly have no idea if that was intentional or not.
Though, maybe that meant that somewhere beneath all the metal and mind control, there was still a person left?
They passed the security checkpoints without a fuss, the reputation of the Harpy preceding them and granting them an all access pass to… anywhere in the building, most likely. It wasn’t like Henry could go anywhere without it, and similarly it was physically incapable of using that access to damage Guillaume’s little mafia. Before he knew it, they were inside the second elevator and on their way to the very top floor.
This one felt even slower than the one previous, for some reason. It wasn’t too long before he took a bit of a gamble to ask a question that had bothered him for a long time.
“Hey, back before- well, you know. Back before then, how’d you choose which members of the Club you attacked and which ones you didn’t?”
The Harpy remained silent for some time, making Henry think he’d been ignored at first. Just as he was about to let the topic drop, he received an unexpected answer.
“...Weapons. The ones I fought always carried weapons.”
“...Like the Predator?” Henry was utterly baffled by the response. “You based your code of conduct off of an action movie?”
“That comparison is reductive,” the Harpy growled.
“Reductive doesn’t mean incorrect,” he countered.
A rattle suspiciously similar to a sigh escaped its rebreather. “Remind me again who is more often on the receiving end of a blunt piece of metal. A werewolf, a vampire, or your fellow man?”
Henry winced, past lives of many clones being more than enough to settle that particular rhetorical question.
“Point taken. Although…”
“Although what?”
“Speaking from personal experience here, it’s amazing what you can pull off with a sharp bit of wrought iron and enough dedication.”
“Really…” A hint of amused curiosity laced the synthetic voice of his fellow devil. “And how many of your clones did it take to force that outcome?”
Henry just chuckled to himself. If only it knew the truth.
The rest of the trek was completed in silence. Finally, they had reached the end destination, and his prison for the foreseeable future.
If he were to guess, it was converted from the old office of whatever CEO used to work in this building. The room itself was spacious, with a high ceiling and a wide pane of glass taking up the entirety of the far wall. Currently, the curtains were drawn, a ceiling light that was – notably enough – non fluorescent hanging from above.
And yet, the whole room was minimally furnished. A single cot, a desk with a portable radio on the top, a doorway to what he assumed was a toilet… Most of the room was just empty space.
“I know this is technically an office complex, but isn’t this, what, the penthouse or whatever you’d call it? Why didn’t Guillaume take this room for himself?”
“Too exposed for his liking,” the Harpy responded, righting its posture to a proper height and stretching its wings open wide. “He’s not the type who likes to be seen.”
Henry grunted in acknowledgment of the fair point. “And you?”
“I was more than happy to take it off his hands, when he offered.”
“He gave you a choice?!”
“One of the few he ever did,” it replied wistfully. “Technically, it’s so I can act as bait in case we get caught unaware by something faster than we can respond to. But, for me…”
It drew back the curtains, giving a view of the city unlike any he’d ever seen before. From here, he could make out the edges of the Shroud on the far side of the river, out past Greenwich.
“For me, it’s a place to escape to, even if only temporarily.” It turned to stare out into the distance alongside him. “Intended to be little more than a gilded cage for me, I recognize, but, even then…”
Henry followed its gaze, where it was looking out in the direction of Woolwich.
“…the view reminds me of the days where I was free to pursue my own flights of fancy.”
He nodded along. For a moment, they simply watched the streets together, drinking it all in from their perch above the madness below.
“You were right,” Henry finally relented.
“Pardon?”
“...This is a great view.”
The Harpy was unsure of how to respond, if only for a brief moment.
“...Thank you.”
He hadn’t expected to be sharing a moment with his captor, but here he was. Though, he couldn’t help but feel it was missing something…
Henry eyed up the radio in the corner. It was covered in a fine film of dust, implying it hadn’t been touched in ages. He figured now was as good a time as any.
A few static hisses later, and Hallow London’s lone surviving radio station set the mood as they watched the city streets below.
“Gentleman Pirate Airwaves, folks, beaming to you live from the host with the voice for radio and the face to match. I’m Robb Huxley, as always. In just a few short moments here, the latest wolfpack report will be arriving, but until then, we have a song about one of the few things I don’t miss from the old world. Here’s ‘Sunburn’...”
He wasn’t sure how Robb managed it, but in between the blatant pro-Club propaganda and the grisly reports of monster movements he delivered as casually as the weather, he always had the exact right song for the moment. Just a single survivor trying to help in the limited way he could, probably. Henry was pretty sure the radio host was just some guy who had found a small niche for himself in this enchanted wasteland.
Well, he’s certainly grabbed onto the chance with both hands, in that case. To his continued survival.
A moody introductory guitar riff came in that matched how he felt with uncanny accuracy. Henry lost himself in the moment, hanging between the present and what laid in store for him.
