Subject: Ride across the river
Date: 9/12/23
Location: DuPont residence, Kingstown,
Then,
The streets of Kingstown
Weston ushered Caroline gently into one of the chairs at the kitchen table before quietly going about the process of preparing her favourite tea. He had put Zoe in the care of Janine – whom he obviously did not refer to as Paranoia when with his family – for the atmosphere in their small, single-story home had grown tense and uneasy. It had been some time coming, he supposed, but it felt as if Jezebel’s repeated interference in his life had reached tipping point now that she had made contact with his family.
And it doesn’t matter if she means nothing by it, he thought, automatically selecting the tea bag and pouring the freshly boiled water. What matters is that Jezebel knows who Caroline is … she knows where she is … she knows that she matters to me. He stood and watched the tea as it slowly worked its way into the water. You can give some people all the chances in the world and they will just see those chances as another opportunity.
He turned at last and added a dash of cold water to the tea before bringing it to the table and setting it quietly before Caroline. Then he took his seat across the narrow expanse from her, and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. It was an uncomfortable, if familiar, sensation. He had always been reasonably forthright with those he worked with and those who worked for him … even those he worked for. But Caroline … the person whose opinion and esteem had come to mean the most to him … with her he found it very difficult to be completely open and honest. Even now, true to her gentle and trusting nature, she waited. Not because it was awkward or she was upset … but because she trusted him.
Ugh. Five years ago I would have thought she was silly. But now … that trust is worth more to me than all the favours of Zenith Level combined.
“There is … a lot to cover … and yet not much at all,” he said slowly, crushing his own hands together under the weight of his mental exercises. How much can I tell her? How much should I tell her? What will be helpful? What is downright unhelpful? How do I even begin …
“You will tell me what you can,” smiled Caroline bravely.
Yeah … but your eyes say different. I haven’t seen that pain on her face since the day I got home to Zoe’s picture of us as a loving family. I …
“I’ve taken advantage of your trust,” he said bluntly, at the same time as he realised it. “I thought it was okay for a long time … I thought it would be worse for you to know about the danger behind the scenes. But …” Weston’s face twisted savagely as he criticised himself. “I have put you in far more danger through keeping you ignorant than if I had just told you what to watch for.”
“No, Weston, I …”
Waston silenced her with a glance.
“You’re too kind for your own good,” he said wretchedly. “Too kind to me. Too kind to others. Certainly too trusting, even for someone who grew up on Merchant Level. And the frustrating thing is … here, you should have been safe. You could have been safe her … if you were married to just about anyone but me.” Weston’s shoulders sagged.
Caroline’s small hands gently covered his clenched ones.
“Weston … I trust you …”
“That isn’t the issue,” he groaned. “I was too na?ve. I didn’t think I would become a …” Weston stopped and thought a moment, then he slowly forced his gaze to meet Caroline’s. “I’m not with STS.”
Caroline smiled. There was a touch of sadness in her eyes, but also relief.
“I … had a feeling,” she murmured. “I may be … sheltered. And trusting. But I don’t think I’m a fool.” Her smiled widened as the relief on her face chased away the sadness. “There were some things I didn’t say anything about because you didn’t seem to wish to talk about them.”
Weston sighed. “I suppose eyes that can read body language are hard to deceive.”
“It wasn’t just my eyes!” Caroline protested. “I thought … well … there were two things in particular. Your superior coming to our home that time, and staying so long. And then … when The End fixed my eyes … both of those things seemed out of the ordinary for a middle-rung agent based at Merchant Level.”
Weston snorted disparagingly. “Ah, yes, the director’s visit. That was an experience. And she’s a good transition into what I want to talk to you about. What I really do is more like … undocumented acquisitions for clients who have the means.”
Caroline remained silent, earnestly watching and listening.
“There’s too much to go over now … but the short version is that we operate outside of the law, and we’re generously funded and protected by people with a lot of power. Those are the sorts of people I work with and for. And … I suppose this will sound like an excuse … but I need to be honest with you at last. I stopped pushing for involvement in high-end jobs that led to promotions. It gradually went from me not seeking them out to me having to actively reject them.” Weston couldn’t look away from the gentle hands clasped over his own. Why she was still touching someone like him, he couldn’t begin to understand. “And as I rejected these operations, I got pushed out. Even then, I didn’t think I would be actively targeted. But the attack on our home in The City opened my eyes pretty harshly. I don’t think it was ordered by the director, but I do think she knew about it and did nothing.”
Weston sighed and finally made eye contact with the kind gaze that he knew had not looked away from him the entire time he had been talking. Caroline looked sad, which frustrated Weston. He knew her well by now, and he knew her sadness was not on her own behalf, or even on behalf of those he had wronged. Why are you like this? he wondered indignantly, afraid for her own safety. Why worry about me when I tell you these things?
“Weston,” murmured Caroline shyly, “I don’t have to think you’re perfect to love you. I told you already … I know you. I know there are things you haven’t told me. But I also know you try your best every day to provide for this family, and I have only seen you grow warmer and more loving with time. Please … don’t torment yourself.” Her eyes turned pleading. “Stay with me. Not only in person … but in our relationship. You can rely on me. I may be small and not much to look at physically,” – and here she blushed modestly – “but I am strong enough for you to lean on me. I am strong enough to receive your frustrations and build you up.” Her hands squeezed his as she tried to persuade him of her conviction. “Please believe me.”
Weston felt the rest of his body follow his shoulders in sagging into his seat, but this was different to before. His shoulders had drooped under the weight of what was happening, but this felt more like he was melting under the radiance of his wife’s sunny disposition.
“You told me you would never lie to me,” Weston murmured.
Caroline looked concerned, as if worried that an accusation was brewing.
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“You’ve never given me cause to doubt you. And so I must believe you yet again.” He smiled wearily at her, and finally covered her hands with his own. “I hope you will believe me in return when I say that …” He paused self-consciously. Good Lord, I don’t say this anywhere near often enough if it is this embarrassing …
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me if you aren’t ready …”
“Oh, shush,” Weston said grumpily. “My one fault with you is you coddle me too much! You want me to rely on you? Then don’t let me hesitate over important things! Don’t tell me it’s fine if I’m not ready … tell me to stand up and be a man! I love you. That is what I want to say. And I want to say it more. If you had your way you might never hear it! So … I love you. Hinata.” Even in is irritation, Weston felt a surge of self-satisfaction at the way her face turned confused and red and then, finally, her hands covered her mouth in a desperate attempt to hide her own embarrassment.
“I’m sorry!” she whispered back, her hands now on her own cheeks. “I … yes, I have treated you like something fragile,” she admitted penitently.
“It’s not all bad,” Weston confessed with a sigh. “Just … when it matters … don’t let me opt out of the hard decisions. I don’t … I know I don’t really treat you right yet. I’m still trying to figure out what’s okay and what isn’t … how … married we are, I guess. The fact that at some point this became real … is still becoming real to me. But … I do want to give you everything that you need. And if I don’t, it’s because I either don’t see it, or don’t think it’s something I should do yet. So please tell me if there’s anything you want from me.”
A little smile played on Caroline’s lips and she looked away, towards the living room window. “Hmm?” she hummed in a coy way that Weston had only heard a handful of times. “Can I tell you what I want from you?” Still facing away, her gaze eased back to his.
“Should I be concerned?” asked Weston drily.
Caroline’s smile grew, and Weston marvelled at the way she was able to blend innocence with seductiveness so effortlessly. She eased out of her seat and wandered around the table with an air of uncertainty, although there was still that same smile in her eyes that drove Weston to distraction.
"I am a little clever..."
AI-rendering of original characters and narrative by T. Sharp
“Um,” Weston began, “Zoe and Janine …”
“I am a little clever,” Caroline winked, settling herself on his lap. “I told Janine to keep Zoe in the playroom for as long as she could …”
“You’re using my own trainee against me, woman?” Weston laughed, defeated.
“Just this once,” she whispered sweetly in his ear. “I won’t do it again …”
Weston growled with a good-humoured irritation as he got to his feet, picking her up easily in his arms as he did. He put his lips to her ear and was gratified by the pleased little shiver that ran through her body. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
Two hours later, Weston stood on the flat, open roof of The Kingstown Hotel. He had long since figured out how to make his way up through the inside of the building. It was the old sort of building with the old sort of management that only locked things if they were very valuable … and nothing at the top of the building was particularly valuable. As such, there was security footage recording anyone going up or coming down, but nothing actually on the roof, and so, for Weston, it was the perfect place to meet people when he wished the meeting to remain unknown.
The sun was easing down towards the horizon now, cradled neatly between two large, craggy, mountains in the distance. The time had come to exercise the levels of caution he had once shown in Dark City. While he suspected that Jezebel was only here to send a message, it was clear that Lilith had put little thought into how Weston would respond to that message.
Is this how you remember me? As someone who sits down and wags their tail when you speak firmly? Do you really think I will pursue King off-world when your most deranged sniffer dog is poking about my family?
The steel door at the staircase creaked gently as someone else arrived on the rooftop. Weston had known she would come. She couldn’t resist an invitation into a situation where she felt like she held all the cards. And this was it, if ever there was going to be a situation like that. Isolated and close-quarters. Jezebel’s fantasy world in which she was the highest power and – at the very least – got to operate as a peer of the progenitors of The Project.
“A little bird told me you would be here,” purred Jezebel as she stepped lightly into view. She looked about curiously, and then grinned with false cheer at Weston. “I know you. I know you’re better than this. What’s the angle, Boneyard?”
Ah, I haven’t heard that one in a little bit now, Weston thought, realising in that moment how much more time he had been spending with his family than other operatives. How nice.
“That’s my line, Jezebel,” he replied flatly, sitting on the edge of the low brick wall that surrounded the building’s roof. “What’re you doing here?”
“I don’t think I should be discussing the parameters of my mission with an agent outside of them … do you?” she teased with a knowing smirk. “Mother raked me over the coals when I cut Blue up. Apparently she was worth something. I didn’t know that! How should I know? Nobody tells me anything!” Jezebel’s eyes abruptly narrowed. “And she said Blue died! How? I didn’t cut her that bad!” A leer spread across her red lips. “Did you lie?”
You really don’t know when to shut up, do you? thought Weston, amazed at the woman’s level of deterioration. How is Lilith still letting this girl run around unsupervised? Is this another test? Does she want to see how I will react to being probed?
“There were complications in the surgery and Blue had already lost a lot of blood,” Weston replied coldly. “Don’t try to tell me you keep track of how deeply you were cutting.”
Jezebel shrugged and laughed. “You got me! But really, Boneyard, if you are lying … you’re scarily good at it! I can usually tell when people are lying … but you just say everything as if it’s provable. I can’t tell if you’re an amazing liar or just brutally honest about everything!”
She wandered closer, her feet gliding across the surface of the roof as if she were dancing. Closer by increments, Weston could tell. Like a weasel doing its dance of death.
Does she think I’m a rabbit? he wondered mirthlessly. Not that it matters. My mind is made up.
"Does she think I'm a rabbit?"
AI-rendering based on original characters and narrative by T. Sharp
Jezebel paused. “Do you think you could take me in a fight?” she wondered, as much to herself as to him. “Is that why we’re alone? I mean … Mother says such amazing things about you … but you’re in Intelligence and Acquisitions. And I’ll bet you’re a great marksman. But if you do that … Mother will know.”
“I mean … she’ll know if you cut me to pieces as well,” Weston drawled.
“Yeah, but … you’ll be dead. So … like … who cares?” Jezebel wondered innocently. “Whereas … you think too much to leave a loose end like that. And I know Devil Child isn’t backing you up here. She’s toppling a crime syndicate in one of the ‘Stans right now. Do you think you’re better than you really are?”
“I don’t think that has anything to do with it,” Weston shrugged. “I don’t really have any objective measure of ‘how good’ I am. What I have a much better gauge on is how good everyone else is.”
“How good you think we all are,” Jezebel sneered, moving closer again. “You have no idea what I’m capable of now.”
“We think about what you’re capable of very differently,” Weston sighed, leaning forward and interlocking his fingers.
Jezebel instinctively jerked back a short series of steps at Weston’s movement, stopping alongside the brick wall a couple metres away from her former superior. Her eyes flashed with irritation at having such a response forced out of her by such a benign movement.
“You think you’re so clever,” she hissed, irate. “Mother has her eye on you. You think you turned her snare into something so wholesome and cute? Your wife is a chain around your ankles and wrists and Mother is tightening those chains now. Maybe she won’t play ball herself, but I saw how you ran to her. Your little ‘Osaka’ is doing her job just fine.” Jezebel grinned. “Don’t worry, Boneyard … I’ll take good care of her while you’re chasing King.”
She took a step forward.
Crack.
Jezebel’s head snapped around under the force of the impact as Weston sat, unmoving, watching. The force of the shot knocked her severely off-balance, and she stumbled a few steps. Her hands flailed about, looking for some handhold, and then her knees hit the brick wall.
With a little sigh, Weston watched her topple over the side of the building. His earpiece beeped immediately.
“Paranoia,” he murmured.
“I’m sorry for asking you to do that,” Weston muttered. “I probably could have taken her … but I don’t think I’d have got out of that unscathed. Confirm her current state. No need to complete the kill if she survived. She’ll be on her guard now, and I’d rather she didn’t know about you. That’s your best defence against these people.”
“Report to me,” Weston said, turning his gaze from the sun, still slipping behind the mountains, to The Traveller, gloating down on him. “Go.”
announced the girl, and signed off.
Weston sighed again. Keep moving. You’ve made your play. All that’s left is to protect your family and go as far down this road as possible.