The interworld hub was no more quiet at three in the morning than it was during the brightest hours of the day. Every few seconds a cough could be heard, its disease-bearing sound echoing off the tiled walls of the subterranean station. It was the hour where one could not tell if they should count it as very early morning or very late evening. Groggy faces blinked their crusty eyes at the whining fluorescent bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Very few words punctuated the stinging silence of the place, only the shuffling of feet moving forward in the ticket line, eager to leave Celedin. Bereaver Rambolt Eells, it seemed, was the only person in the hub who wanted to be there.
“Destination?” the station agent asked without her eyes leaving her paperwork. She sounded bored, exhausted. Rambolt Eells wondered how long she had been working at this desk. Her drooping eyes and slurring words suggested that either this was the tail end of a very long shift, or she’d inappropriately prepared herself for waking up at two in the morning for work. Her posture was hunched and wrong, and her gut pushed against the metal desk at which she sat. She wore no makeup, had done nothing with her short hair. There was no effort or care to anything about her, no dedication to her work or commitment to keeping the blood of the city flowing. She worked at an interworld hub, manning the gates to one of the most crucial interstices in the city—and she didn’t even bother to cover up the sore that was growing in the corner of her mouth. Rambolt Eells found himself disgusted.
“I have none,” he said to her.
The station agent looked up at him. For a moment he saw surprise and then terror in her eyes as she noticed the X mark across his face—but no recognition appeared. It looked only like physical horror, like one looking upon a burn victim. She quickly collected herself and began moving a pencil around the desk, shuffling through papers as she remembered her duty.
“Excuse me?” she said distractedly.
“I seek not to leave. Only information.”
The station agent glanced at him again. She avoided looking directly at his face. “Sir, I’m selling tickets off world. If you have—“
“I’m looking for a woman,” Eells said. “She came through this place within the last few days. From Lormian.”
“Sir,” the station agent said. “If you have any questions—“
“It is of the utmost importance that I find her. I understand the vagueness of my inquiry, and that many people would fit this description. Thus I need a transcript of all of the travelers that have come from the Lormian-Celedin Aperture since last week.”
The station agent looked at first confused, but then rapidly her face scrunched and she became annoyed. Eells could see that he had turned from an interesting-looking character to an irritating customer. The station agent rummaged through the things on her desk, as if trying to locate something. Eells inferred that this was indeed the start of her shift, and she was unhappy about being confronted by such annoyance on so little sleep. He wondered what sort of debauchery she had been up to the night before.
“Sir,” she said, any trace of nervousness in her voice gone, “I can’t give you that. Do you have a destination, or are you done?”
“I need that transcript,” Eells said. “You have access to it. Give it to me.”
The station agent shut her red-rimmed eyes tight and sighed. “Sir, I can’t give out transcripts of public travel to a civilian.”
Eells frowned. “Civilian?”
The station agent leaned to her left and looked around him. “Next,” she said.
Eells raised his arm and stopped the man behind him from walking forward. The man stopped suddenly, alarmed and clearly also very tired.
“I am no civilian,” Eells said. “Do you not recognize my mark? I am the Bereaver, woman. What I ask, you provide.”
“Hey, pal—“ the man behind Eells said. Eells kept his arm up, not allowing the man to pass.
The station agent looked entirely irritated at this point. “Listen, sir. I don’t care who you are. It’s the law. Now, please, move so I can help actual customers.”
Eells flinched from the sheer heresy of her words. She didn’t care that he was a Bereaver? Was that true, or did she simply not know what that title meant? To think that someone could be entirely ignorant of their own culture, of their own history… Was she not an adherent of the Order? How dare she talk to him in such a blasphemous way. He thought to grab her by the throat, to grab her hand and hold it flat to the table while he removed one of her fingers… but the iron grating between the two of them prevented any such justice.
“Hey,” the man behind him said, and grabbed Eells’ shoulder.
Eells spun around, eliciting a brief shock from the man as he witnessed the mark across Eells’ face. Then Eells placed both hands into the man’s filthy mouth, grabbing the teeth of his upper jaw in one hand and his lower jaw in the other. He pulled up and down at the same time, hard, feeling the man’s jaw widen and hearing flesh tear like thick fabric. Eells pulled his bloody fingers free and the man screamed through his now exceptionally wide mouth. The man fell to his knees, wailing and clutching at his broken, bleeding face.
Eells returned to the station agent. She leaned back from her desk—a motion that the slouched shape of her body seemed to disagree with—and screamed as well. Eells grabbed the iron grating with both hands and leaned close to it. Around him, voices began to rise, their grogginess and exhaustion rapidly becoming eclipsed by wonder and horror.
“Listen to me,” Eells said through the iron mesh. “There is nothing you can say to disuade or slow me. Give me what I came for and I won’t come in there after you.”
The station agent fell out of her chair. She crawled to the back of her booth, never taking her eyes off of the ghoulish figure that pressed against the iron bars. She managed to open the door, and then crawled out shrieking.
Eells remained where he stood. The air around him had become electrified. People pushed against each other to get away from him. They tripped over the stanchions that confined them to their lines, pushing at each other to get distance between themselves and the moaning man on the floor with the bloody mouth. Eells heard an alarm go off. He breathed deep, and waited.
It wasn’t long before three men with guns showed up. They told him to get on the ground, to keep his hands where they could see them, but he paid them no mind. He glanced over at them, barely turning his head. They didn’t wear the green and gold of the Celedin constabulary—no, these were employees of the hub.
“Bring me someone who can help me,” Eells said. To his right, the man with the broken jaw let out another wail. The hub guards kept their pistols aimed at him, but they glanced at each other. It was clear to Eells that at least one of them remembered their history, and was filled with awe at the mark upon his flesh. They said something to each other, and then one of them retreated back into the depths of the hub. The other two kept their guns raised. Eells waited.
Another man appeared with them. He was older, well fed, and clearly terrified.
“My name is Jon Rakinson,” the older man said. “The administrator of this hub. Who are… What do you seek, Bereaver?”
Eells felt a tightening in his guts, a satisfied tension. To hear others call him Bereaver was still so alien, so exciting. There was a man at his feet in pain, a man who needed urgent medical care if he was ever to speak or chew again, and yet the attention and focus of everyone in the room was on him. Rakinson’s duty was to aid the patrons of this hub—and yet he did not because a Bereaver stood before him. Eells smiled, despite his best efforts not to.
It took ten minutes for the employees of the Lormian-Celedin Aperture to get him the transcript he needed. It was dozens of pages, rapidly bound within a spiral binder, and stamped with the holy symbol of the Order of Prevalistics. The worker who delivered it to him did so slowly, stopping to kneel before bowing his head and handing it up to Eells.
Rambolt Eells touched the worker on the forehead with two fingers. “Wards on you,” he said.
