Page 40 of Remnants: Disruption
“There’s at least two figures staring back at me. One of them I think was murdered, but he’s not very clear on it. He’s actually just yelling slurs at me. The other one was hit by a car on her way to work last month.”
Harlot’s eyes go from soft confusion to downright concern as she looks back at me.
“It’s not a dark secret, it’s that my fucking mind is going to let go before anything else. It’s that I’m probably not long for this world. Either because I’m going to end it myself or because someone stronger than me is going to take my power as a challenge. And strong or not, I’m not invincible.”
“Well, that’s somewhere between harrowing and downright devastating,” she says after a few seconds of silence. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t get soft on me now,” I say, hoping my tone comes across as I want it to. “You’re one of the few I actually like here.”
We stand in comfortable silence for a long time. Harlot had always been someone I could at least rely on to get her job done. Early on after I’d woken up outside New Chicago, she’d been one of the few to really give me the time of day.
Her powers are less than concrete. There's shapeshifting and mind control involved, but she’s never been open about them. That's just how this world works. Even if I looked her up in RISE, it'd probably be something confusing and openly misogynistic.
That’s just how things are for a powerful female Remnant.
“Would you change it if you could?” she asks suddenly. “Being a Remnant, I mean.”
“Yes,” I answer without hesitation. “I’d change all of it. I don’t even remember my own Infliction.”
Getting rid of my nightmares? No more voices? No more shadows? There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to be human.
“Don’t let them make you feel different,” she says finally. “Don’t let them make you feel like you’re not just as worthy of love.”
I turn to her, finding her looking off into the distance with a soft expression.
“That was sappy,” I say, not sure how to respond to that. “Didn’t take you for the type.”
She glares at me, but it doesn’t have a lot of fire. “I know what this world does to us. I know what our powers do to our minds. I get it. But if you let them take everything from you, if you let them decide how you’re going to live, you’re nothing but the tool they want you to be. You’re nothing but the propaganda they spread.”
She gives me another genuinely warm grin before squeezing my bicep softly.
“By the way,” she says, seemingly not expecting me to respond to her advice. “You missed the part of the meeting where Angel said some NCPD detective is marching up to DAEMON’s doorstep this afternoon.”
My heart thuds to a sudden stop, almost dropping entirely out of my chest.
“Figured you might want to know,” she says before walking back off to the stairs.
I check the display of my mask, but there’s nothing from Percy.
The fucking idiot is confronting the most powerful corporation on the planet on her own.
Chapter 21
Demons
One P.M, October 24 th , 1030 A.D.
In Nye Verden, there are no such things as coincidences. Chaos breeds disorder, but it also weaves fates and souls. You are just as likely to meet the love of your life as you are the one who will strike the final blow. And they are often one and the same.
Omen in recorded monologue after the assassination of President White, 1025 A.D.
Iwonder somedays if my existence is a joke—a cosmic hiccup in the grand scheme of the mayhem provided by the Disruptions.
In the early days it had felt freeing to be the only one with these abilities. To step into the shadow and reappear wherever I wanted—I had felt like the most powerful woman to exist. Add in the shadow bending, manipulation, and general fear factor when approaching the common Remnant or criminal? I was on top of the world.
But this power only ever isolated me.
And as Harlot makes her way across the rooftop, I realize that the most ridiculous part of it is that I had to name these powers myself. Shadow-step? Darkness manipulation? There’s never been anyone I could talk to about them. There’s never been anyone who earned that trust.
