Page 6 of Remnants: Disruption
It doesn’t take much to drudge up the bitterness in my voice. The power itself, while insanely useful, has been nothing but nightmare after nightmare for a decade now. It’s a wonder I haven’t lost my goddamned mind.
Well. Maybe I have, if the leering shadows behind the woman are any indicator.
Even a week ago, they’d been amorphous at best.
“Her name was Mara Anders,” she says quietly, staring at the chip. “At least that’s who the room was rented to.”
“Did she say anything to you when she got here?” The name rings of familiarity.
“No,” the young woman says, shaking her head. “She was quiet. Came in, paid in advance with cash and went upstairs.”
“And no one suspicious came in?”
This time, the woman looks contemplative for a few moments. Then she shakes her head with a miserable expression.
“A lot of people are suspicious, Ms. Skovsgaard,” she shrugs. “No one that stood out. She only did because her eyes were weird.”
“Weird how?” I ask, leaning forward.
“Like...” the woman looks into mine. “Like yours.”
“Silver?” I frown, trying to understand the clear omission in her words.
“Powerful,” she whispers. Her eyes study mine.
“Ah,” I say, leaning back on my heels. “A Remnant.”
The young woman’s expression doesn’t change as she nods quickly. It’s a look I’ve gotten a lot. Most people react to me in one of two ways. One is fear. Fear that manifests as anger, bitterness, cruelty, or some other projection of a man with aninferiority complex. The other is something like curiosity. It, too, changes with context.
But the look on this woman’s eyes is clear. She sees me as a Remnant. Entirely disconnected from humans. Entirely different.
“Alright,” I say, rapping my knuckle on the counter. “And your name?”
“Livy,” she says softly, eyes dropping back to the wood.
“I’ll be in touch if we have any more questions,” I say, backing from the desk.
“Arya,” I hear Percy’s voice from the top of the stairs. Turning, I freeze as I see her face.
Horror is written over her features, skin pale despite her tanned complexion. Wordlessly, I take the stairs two at a time.
The ugly peeling yellow walls continue up the stairs and to the narrow hallway running the length of the building. Hotel Calvary clearly isn’t exactly worried about the appearance of their one and only floor.
With six rooms along one wall, it isn’t hard to tell which of them was Mara’s. Or, rather, was rented under a Mara Anders. Two officers stand with their backs to the wall on either side of the door. A tech stands near the door, taking photos on a camera with “DAEMON” printed on the side.
Percy turns to face me again, her pallor not at all clearing in the few minutes outside the room.
“How bad?” I ask softly, watching her eyes crease even further.
“Just—” she breathes out sharply. “Just different, I guess.”
I nod and make my way past her, standing just beside the tech, taking advantage of my height to see over his shoulder.
And—my god.
The flow of Affliction outside filters through the closed blinds, bathing the room in an eerie red glow. It makes the desiccatedcorpse with hands and ankles tied to the bedposts that much more harrowing. It’s splayed out with only a towel covering it from the chest down.
The body looks like someone sucked it dry of insides. Ribs are visible through the cotton fabric of the towel; jagged lines of bone mark the cave of the abdomen. Cheekbones poke through taut skin along its eyes and mouth. The eyes, though, remain. Their reddish hue not at all diminished like the rest of it.
