Collab with @Ruby



“It’s a little fancier than Joe’s Diner, my turn to look out of place.”

The process of sending the text message over to Rachel chimed even as Henry placed the device back into his pocket, his location shared with the female kindred as he approached the front desk of the Lounge. Despite his words to the Ventrue woman, and indeed, she would no doubt look far more on theme, neither of the receptionist staff offered protest as he moved past them, a card of gold pressed to the electronic sign in as he did so.

He was dressed in the style of what some would consider truly, vastly, wealthy. Smart brown leather shoes tapped across the wooden flooring, but such expenditure was paired with Levi jeans and a white linen shirt against the LA Heat. This was not the attire of the corporate traveler, but the old money that had them on their payroll. It was also a lot more comfortable for him, and so the insinuation suited him fine.

Even at this hour the lounge would usually be open to a relatively high number of red eye travelers, but for now it had been cleared. No doubt a flurry of complaints would have resulted from the minor inconvenience of having to share the One World Alliance lounge instead, but all would soon have impressed on them the importance of not kicking up too much of a fuss. If it had been up to Henry, he’d have closed the place with the excuse of emergency maintenance. The upper echelons of the Germanic Camarilla had a different style altogether. The Masquerade was important, but so too was the principle of hierarchy. All would know the risk of a complaint, even if they didn’t quite understand why.

Henry didn’t pause as he moved through the interior of the lounge. The tables and countertops were even more pristine than normal, the glimmering, minimalistic opulence of the catering areas made all the more needless and beautiful for the lack of the culinary delights that they would usually host. That did give him pause, before the man beckoned over one of the few, oppressively pale and smartly dressed, staff.

“I’ll have the chicken burger, I’ll be outside.” The request took more than a few moments to register on the surprised waiter. Henry wasn’t entirely sure how much these elite servants would know about the nature of their masters, but they knew enough to be surprised at the request for something solid to consume. He savored the reaction for only a heartbeat, before heading out onto the truly outdoor decking, ignoring the secondary internal deck. This area was truly abandoned, although the light of the propane fireplaces already danced in the night air. He drew himself up a chair next to the lit bar top, tapping his fingers on the marble top as he watched a plane scream through the air above. He focused for a few moments, allowing his exceptional eyes to filter through the light pollution to drink in the night. By his calculation, it would still be some time before their favored guest would arrive at the lounge. Might as well enjoy the view.

And his burger.

"The Star Alliance Lounge is closed?"

Rachel blinked at the question. She'd barely had time to get out of the car before the other woman was on her, saying the words in the form of a question. LAX, the airport, wasn't titled such on the management side. It was part of a larger entity; the Los Angeles World Airports. The managing group for more than one of the area's airports. The re-organization had been in place by Rachel's mortal predecessor before she had even met Eva, though it didn't take Eva long to allow Rachel to get her hands on it and work on the efficiency of the operation.

"Yes," was all Rachel said through her blink as she stepped out of the backseat of the Cadillac, though the woman just stared at her with a pained, forced, smile on her painted lips. The woman was Lauren Bradley, red hair, pale skin, mid-thirties, the Chief Airport Operations Officer for LAX, and the Chief of Staff to the LAWA CEO. Where Rachel was dressed in skinny fit style black wool pants, enriched with gold-tone Medusa button closures on either hip, black heels, and a magenta wool blazer with a black silk tank top under it.

For those familiar, it was all part of the latest runway line from Versace, although that line wouldn't be shown to the public for a month in Paris. Lauren Bradley wore something else; some kind of blazer and skirt combo, it looked older, maybe Calvin Klein? Rachel didn't care. Rachel just stared in return, forcing Ms. Bradley to finally get brave, and say something else in the scene that was quickly becoming awkward as they stood just outside one of the VIP entrances to one of the terminals.

"It's just, along with the added security--"

Rachel didn't need the woman to continue, happy to cut her off with a stiff, professional, half-smile. "Ms. Bradley, I assure you we wouldn't be doing either of these measures if they weren't necessary. My goal wasn't to make you apologize to everyone in LAX for us tonight...but at the same time I'm afraid this can't be helped. I'll let you know the moment we can open the lounge back up."

The woman apologized, prattled on about something, but by that point Rachel had to move. What Eva had told her about the Ventrue Inner Council seat holder was that he was something of an act that took himself too seriously, and Rachel didn't figure it would do well to make Henry wait for her long, let alone deal with Hardestadt on his lonesome, making them both wait. Black suited security flanked her, one white, one black, both looking like commandos wearing a suit. She had met both before; they were good gents. Some of Andre's inner circle, highly trained, and impeccably positioned to cover her if it came to it. Yet the short walk to the elevator, and the shorter walk to the front of the longue were both uneventful. She didn't go in through the front door, she went in through the kitchen service, meeting two more armed men that let her and her guards in. The guards peeled off as Rachel found him outside.

"Hey," was all she said as she walked outside to the lounge's Terrace. Something inside her wanted to say more, but her voice wouldn't betray her, and nothing about her appearance suggested anything of the sort. She ditched the magenta blazer and draped it over one of the barstools, before moving closer to him, sneaking a peek at the smart phone the Digital Thaumaturges that they financed and protected had provided her. It felt like years ago her lips and hands were all over his body, not days. Yet so much had happened in between, and they hadn't seen him.

"You talked to her, didn't you?"

Somehow, someway, Rachel just knew.

The sudden charge in the air around him at her arrival wasn’t something he hid, although whether it was purely body language and pheromones or something that spoke of his nature was another matter entirely. The fact she was immediately lost in her phone didn’t dissuade him at all. A slightly more wholesome memory of laughing at the sight of her desperately craning for signal while balanced atop a run down cadillac on a dirt road sprung to mind and he didn’t hide the smile from that either. He didn’t hide the brush of intimacy, his hand tracing her hip for the moment, as he leaned in both in greeting and to reply.

“In a sense. It’s the mages who took her, but they need new tricks if they’re to hide someone from me. She wants to stay with them for now, get them onboard. I think that’s what we need, but I could touch her mind for long enough to get my marching orders.” While he efforts to hide whatever rivaling forces of emotion within her may have been successful, the unspoken question of his presence wasn’t hidden from him, and so he carried on, still not putting space between them. “India. I couldn’t not act.” It wasn’t an apology, but the tone was there. It risked his exposure, but Henry could no more sit back and watch a continent die than he could have submitted to the will of his father when it crashed against his compassion. “And I wasn’t alone, Caine is on the move again, which means I can find him, talk to him. You all have given me hope I might be able to reach him, this time.” His words had nothing to do with the geography and everything to do with his efforts to win the heart of another being cursed to wander.

“But, I still probably need a minder for a meeting with King Ventrue.”

Rachel chuckled, "I almost pity the mages; no one makes an impression like Eva. Grace told us they have her at..." Rachel's brown eyes darted there and here, and back again, a sliver of a shrug rolling her porcelain shoulders and the shoulder length dark hair with the slight wave parted down the middle. Surveillance had her a touch nervous. "Well, you know, I'm sure."

She almost didn't want to speak the next sentence. She remembered what happened the last time Henry saw the creature, and the violence in the man's eyes that day. "We, uh...we saw Nathaniel. He's been stalking us. It sounded like he's been stalking us because he couldn't find Eva anywhere in, or around, the city. You should have seen the stare he gave Yanci. I thought he was going to leap for her throat, then and there. Luckily Andre and Mihail are quite the, uh, dissuasive force."

Rachel ignored the Caine mention. Based on everything she knew, it was better just to keep it to herself.
In the same way he didn’t hide the lingering intimacy, the hand left drifting at her hip or the warmth of his smile for her, he didn’t seek to conceal the sudden tightening of his shoulders, the tautness in his build at the mention of the Nosferatu. The last time he had met Nathaniel he had run him through with the Blade of Eden, and only Eva’s pleas for clemency had prevented him from igniting the divine blade and scattering the kindred’s ash upon the wind.

“Tell me if you encounter him again, please.” The intensity came with his fingers pressing into her slightly, before with an exhalation he relaxed. “I won’t hunt him, but I’ll stop him from taking her.” He didn’t need to add who he meant. His bond was Eva was like nothing else in the cosmos, even he didn’t quite understand what burned, or perhaps had burned, between himself and the woman beside him, but Yanci had been the first of them all for him.

Finally he pulled away from her, just a little breathing room. Perhaps to her relief, certainly a relief for the neatness of her outfit no longer presented with the risk of his grip. The interruption was preemptive, as the glass doors out onto the deck slid open. There was a roar overhead and suddenly the outer deck was engulfed in the dazzling light of a plane’s headlamps, a brightness so intense it momentarily obscured vision. Once the glare faded, he was standing there.

Henry knew that the moment of light had no doubt equally obscured the flash of red sights as unknown marksman dialed in on any perceived threat to the man in the dark suit. Exquisitely tailored from an Italian fashion house no one on the American continent could hope to secure an appointment for, the man was slightly too leonine to be considered truly handsome, no matter the pleasant smile on his face as he approached the pair. He appeared unaccompanied, but that was never the case for a man such as this.

“Miss Fields, it has been some time since your name graced my desk, such a pleasure to see life is treating you well in the interim.” His hand extended to her as he drew closer, palm horizontal to shake, a greeting of respect, rather than expected subservience. The man’s blonde and shortly cropped hair framed a face of powerful edges, atop a form that was equally angular, with just enough substance as to not be lanky despite his near-exceptional height. Hardestadt had made a career of orchestrating the unknowable web of the Ivory Tower, mastering far older elders simply from his ability to master information. It was no surprise someone as promising as Rachel had been an object of interest, even before attaining anything that could be considered greatness by the Camarilla. His cold, grey-blue eyes settled on Henry the moment after, with only a simple nod of greeting. “Mr Locke, a shame to hear about your bar.”

Rachel's physical response to the hand shake was demure, even if the look upon her fine dark features were closer to glacial: he was her blood, she was Ventrue, she would be demure for him. More than anything, Rachel resisted the urge to ask the man about Thaddeous. Mr. Carter hadn't been unkind, and their partnership had provided a huge problem for the Sabbat on the East Coast. She knew they lost every gain they'd had save for D.C.. In a bittersweet moment, she also had an idea that the Camarilla had used some of the analytical information Rachel had composed against Eva and the Anarchs from San Francisco.

Yet she never took it personally, and she had simply never heard another thing from Thaddeous. It wasn't hate Rachel felt for the Camarilla, it was just...indifference. Funny thing when you ran one of the largest money laundering rings the world had ever seen and had a contact spreadsheet that could make even a Ventrue elder blush. Hollywood was the kind of soft power the Camarilla would never achieve, Eva the kind of elder that the Camarilla just simply could not produce for someone like her to serve.

A slight perk of her brow was all the suggestion that she wandered, this close to the man, how Gehenna affected him. The Coterie had Eva's blood to protect them, Hardestadt had nothing of the sort. She hoped it wasn't along the horrible rumors she had heard coming out of Chicago.

"Welcome back to Los Angeles, Mr. Hardestadt. I hope the modern nights have been kind to you."

There was a crackle of amusement in the air at her tone of greeting, Henry's hand passing in a stroke down the indent of her spine, the tone of someone enjoying such a radical change in her nature, even if his gaze towards the opposite kindred remained serious.

"As kind as any have been." The elder Ventrue responded with a smile that lacked any true warmth. "New challenges require new solutions, but that in of itself is a constant." As the male spoke, a waiter arrived with a tray bearing decorated champagne flutes, although the liquid within lacked any sort of sparkle and possessed a deep crimson rather than hints of gold. Hardestadt had collected his own glass before they were offered towards the pair, notably long before Henry's summoned burger had arrived. "I would be most welcome to invite you back to aid in such solutions, those who still speak of you still speak very highly, if with regret." Piercing eyes never left Rachel as the man supped from his drink, the promise of both wrath and opportunity all at once. "But I suppose you will continue to decline the offer, and much as there is always interest I did not come all this way for a hiring prospect." He did not expand on this further for the moment, content to study the pair as he had before.

"No, thank you," Rachel all but beamed at the waiter, dark eyes sparkling with a vibrant warmth that matched the smile she flashed. A brilliance that disappeared within a single beat once the waiter moved on. Instead, confusion riddled her darkly fine features as her head tilted just the barest of angles to the side, her brown eyes fixated on Hardestadt, her voice sprinkled with a cheery amusement atop the sound of confusion, "Why would I downgrade?"

The confusion wiped, her head upright, head and shoulders tall as the real Rachel threw off the facade, her hands with clear polished manicured fingertips coming together in front of her, "Your new challenges pale in comparison to our new challenges. You want to save yourself, we want to save everything and everyone. We are not the same, Mr. Hardestadt. She has never asked for your help, and while we certainly don't believe Matthew Lubbock is your doing, it must be said we do consider this another red mark among a long list of them in our ledgers concerning the debts incurred with our group by your organization. Recompense is of no interest to us, long past is the time for that. I have come simply in the hope your organization wishes to discuss ways in which to collaborate on solutions to the overarching challenges."

Her lips were smiling again by the end of her addressing of the man with such a pleasant and warm tone, the subtle and secure smile of the clear eyed and supremely confident.

Rachel’s words certainly had their sting, and it would be impossible to suggest they were entirely expected, at least in the manner in which they delivered. Nevertheless, as Hardestad paused to sip the offered wine, savoring the unexpected taste of elder blood, if not quite questioning where it had originated, his reaction registered as little more than a twinge across his features.

“A warning then. The past is littered with the unnecessary fallen of those who considered their challenges unique and refused the advice and support of others. I should know, I was there in North Africa when this continent first learned the cost of these Modern Nights, failing to heed the advice of their own allies.”

“That’s entirely why I’ve come from our stronghold, and left the rest of my Coterie, to talk with you, and give you that.” Rachel said, motioning with a nod to the glass in his hand, “it doesn’t long for the effect to kick in. It’s hard to say exactly what it will do to you, you’re the first of your clan and generation to taste it. For certain you’ll notice any lingering Beckoning to be gone, completely. I’ve noticed my mind clears faster and there’s a certain…serenity to it. My Coterie fellow, Andre, has also mentioned he feels a touch more humane after. In that drink is Eva’s blood. We have but a tiny supply of it, yet the effects are good for about a week, give or take, depending on the individual. When she told us her blood could help us remain free of the immediate pull of Gehenna, we didn’t believe her, I’m embarrassed to say. Sounded too good to be true. In either case, a token of our good will and desire to collaborate, should you decide your organization would be best in alignment with our goals.”

Her eyes flicked to Henry, waiting on the man to say…something.

“It’s all true, Hardestadt, not just what Rachel is telling you about Eva, but everything the mad prophecies the Camarilla have worked so long to suppress have warned you. I know you suspect, but I’m telling you, it’s worse than you fear.” Henry finally spoke following the look from Rachel, his focus having not wavered, at least in the line of his eyes, from the man for the length of the conversation. There was a crackle in the air between them, an unspoken something that spoke to an established acquaintance, or at least reputation.

The German Kindred’s attention had, in the meantime, slipped to the drink, tilting his head slightly as he examined both the visual appearance of the glass as well as the sensation Rachel described working through him. It was something of a social and political affront to feed another blood of a potentially dominating elder, but for now the slight would be forgiven. “Some have already been dismissed by the march of time, the millennia came and went, the world still stands.” Hardestadt’s cold gaze fixed Henry Locke for a moment longer, before he spoke. “My father-in-darkness knew you by another name, Mr Locke. Whatever your reasons, you actions in such times were fruitful for the Ivory Tower, for that, we have listened to you both thus far.” Had the elder kindred known the full story of quite how far back the machinations of Henry ran, he would likely act far more decisively, but for now they remained nebulously vast. “There are two agents I trust to be of use to you in this city, I have grown unimpressed with the works of Vannevar, you may dispose of him and I will not act. Genevive Dieudonné and Violetta Kyborowski, I will instruct them to aid your efforts in this city in the interim. What information I have that may be of use to you from the Old World I shall share. Stay out of New York, a great death is building there that I cannot prevent, should it wake no amount of chosen blood will save you from the initial annihilation.” The aid and warning provided, the suited Kindred finished the remainder of his wine in a short gulp. “If that is all?”

Rachel looked unimpressed; or maybe it was just the Ventrue blood in her. “Bye.” She didn’t wait, just flashed a look of rare irritation to Henry and left, only scooping her own blazer on her way out, her last word a word to the security team, “you’re done the moment they leave this airport. Start the hunt for Lubbock. Intel and logistics go through Andre, and we don’t care how much it costs, or who you have to intimidate or hurt to make it happen.”

There was a surge to the loudness of her steps, as she all but buzzed with the fact that she had just unleashed hundreds of their own trained people equipped with an overwhelming surveillance capability, the largest kine and Kindred intelligence and influence network in the state. The only reason she stopped at the door? To turn around, look at the security detail, and add, “Vannevar is dead before midnight tomorrow, and anyone who would try to harbour or protect him, no matter their affiliation or status.”

Collab with @Fiber

Not a single corner of the room was free from wires and machinery. On the balcony a stream of drones dropped off identical shockproof boxes, all locked with biometric seals, stacking them high. Grace was a whirlwind of activity, connecting wires, unloading equipment, shoving furniture aside when needed, opening the boxes and cataloging their contents. The only light was the glow of a dozen monitors and hundreds of status lights. It was not as organized as she liked, but she was working with limited time and in a non-ideal space. The wires crisscrossed the room like jungle vines, spreading across the king size bed, running along the floor and up high to the ceiling. She had decided to set up everything she thought she might need: enormous amounts of memory, Deep Learning Accelerators, ASICs, Quantum Processors, and more, so many things that could not yet be disclosed to the general public but would make any computer science student froth at the mouth with excitement. If she could get it installed here she wanted it installed here.

One last hard part was connecting the liquid nitrogren coolant system, fogs seeped through the room as she locked the last hose into place. After taking a moment to check the connections and let the setup scripts run, she walked to the doorway of the room and shouted into the hall “It should be ready soon. Our dataset is 23.8 million people, that will cover all of Southern California, even those Second Inquisition agents outside of Los Angeles proper. Between what you have, what Rachel has, and what I have, there is high probability we have enough data to identify them.” Grace then turned back to her work as she waited for Maty, and wondered to herself what Gwen would think of what she had done to the place.

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatthefuck."

The tone wasn't enraged. It was a rather level toned exclaimation. It was more...pure horror mixed with exasperation. There, in the doorway, stood the five-foot-nothing girl that was latina before latina had a name. A mix of Spanish priests that abused and raped, stuck in a room and abused both physically and sexually and emotionally almost her entire life. And, yet, this was one of the more shocking moments of her life and unlife. Pretty brown eyes were WIDE, staring an absolute laserhole through the Federale's face. Breathing carefully, Yanci kept herself in some state of barely kept control.

"MATY!! THE FEDERALE RUINED THE PRICELESS HISTORICAL ROOM. FIX IT."

Yanci smiled at Grace after the sudden increase of volume directed down the hall, a radiant as any Hollywood socilate, "Yeah. I'm gonna go spend the night at our house on the island. Let me know if you guys need anything."

With a sudden spin on her heel, Yanci all but ran from the scene she had found in the master suite of the house registered with the National Registry of Historical Places. Not even a minute later the long haired young man was standing at the doorway, blinking. He looked to the left, to the right, and then he blinked all over again. "Well, okay. Where are we, uh...where are we starting?"

He might have continued, had the laughter not errupted from the tall blonde behind him, holding both hands over her mouth—which did absolutely nothing to stiffle the sound of the laugh. "Holy shit. This looks like a production set. Uh...need anything, Grace? Flux capacitor, maybe?"

When their dark eyes met and Yanci stared so intensely that Grace wondered if she was employing some power of vampiric blood, Grace tried to look apologetic but came across as confused. Grace’s own approach to interior aesthetics ranged from “utter chaos” (in her college days) to “soulless desolation” (now), so this wasn’t something she understood well. She said “Fair enough. You can bill me for any restorations.” as she questioned the value of historic preservation in her head. Hopefully the rest of the coterie didn’t share Yanci’s extreme reaction.

When Gwen and Maty came, she said “No need for flux capacitors, we stopped using those years ago. They were too unreliable for any serious chronomanipulation, and are now superfluous.” Grace said. She left it up to them to figure out if she was lying or not. Gwen was welcome to be here as long as she didn’t touch anything sensitive.

Now she turned her attention to Maty. “I’m sorry that I didn’t leave much room for you to work Maty, but I didn’t know what you’d need. If you’re the candles, talismans and pentagrams type, there is a flat area over there. Be careful around the box labeled D-Wave, it needs to keep a very precise temperature. The section next to the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engines and Tensor Processing Unit prototypes would be a better place. As for the user interface, I wasn’t sure if you’d want a Neural link, a VR headset, or just a plain old screen, so I have one of each.” she said, gesturing to a suitcase lying open next to the door to the balcony. “The set up here should handle any workload we might come across, from cracking encryption to deploying machine learning models, and if we need more horsepower or storage I’ve got connections to the major cloud providers and to UCLA’s quantum computing center, though I can’t guarantee the latency will be good.”

“We’ll start by building on the profiles of the known Second Inquisition agents, from there we can build a model of their characteristics and their social networks. Then we use the data from everyone in Southern California and we’ll find every single one of their agents in the area, with which you can do what you will. This isn’t the easiest way but it is the quickest, much faster than waiting for official approvals, we should have results before morning.

"Ooh-kay. Maty..."

"You'll be around?"

Gwen smiled, big, and just nodded a few times before she disappeared down the hall and down the stairs again. Maty himself entered into the room and stood near Grace, the only device out and activated was his smartphone, as he explained, "No need, I'll let the team listen in and do most of the legwork from their secret location."

Maty had been there before, and had his 'doorways' to the location that were more magical than practical, for security, but now wasn't the time to leave Catalina Island. The rest of them had made them abundantly clear. "You get all that, Masika?"

The feminine voice on the other end of the smartphone with the speaker call activated sounded off, "Yeah, Maty, we get what she's doing. We can assist with the data-mining and the send over a few profiles we already have built for agents we know about it. Let us know if you want more. We have over twenty we've sent to Eva and Rachel over the last year."

It seemed Maty would be taking a supervisory role. That meant he trusted his team. If they ever had a normal time again perhaps Grace would look into them, see if they would want to collaborate in the future. "I'll open a session for them. They can send as many profiles as they have, information overload is not an issue here. Now, let's begin with the processing." Grace took off her jacket, and started to reach around her back, going under her shirt and feeling for the connections. Then, one by one she plugged cable after cable her spinal column, finishing with one at the base of her head. The shirt was wrinkling and shifting as moved but her mind was now deep in the uncountable bytes of data, her eyes saw no longer saw the world, only the computer's inner workings. "If you have trouble keeping up, tell me. I will make what adjustments I can without compromising performance."

The process started with the most basic biographical information, from birthplace to test scores, but expanded to encompass everything they could. Every text message and email they sent, every motion made with anything attached to a GPS, every word spoken in earshot of an internet connected device, every little blurry and half formed image stored in the cloud somewhere, minute by minute records of mundane internet activity, all of their purchases and media consumption. Most of it was useless, most of it would be discarded without any thought and lost into the ether, but any of them could contain a hidden gem and had to be fed in at the start.

It didn’t matter who the data belonged to, it was hers to read. Privacy was a concept that had outlived its usefulness, and she hoped the rest of the world would realize that. Some entities had already shared their data or given a government agency a backdoor, those were easiest. For everyone else, there was a wealth of unpatched vulnerabilities lurking (Grace was grateful for the digital draculas sharing a few), and if that failed the quantum hardware could run through any standard encryption after a short wait. She knew there were still people who would fall through the net, those who had committed to living a life completely disconnected from modern technology or those with technological talent bordering on superhuman, it irritated her but she knew that some flaws were unavoidable. She didn’t count the scale of the data, didn’t know how many bytes it was, she just monitored the resource usage and pulled in more and more hardware from the cloud whenever she ran into bottlenecks.

This was hacking in the truest sense, not just breaking through security or operating a computer, it was doing the impossible within the limits of a system. It was all concepts that already existed, just ones that were a decade away from becoming refined enough for use by the sleepers, if Grace could reproduce this in public she’d have enough material for a dozen papers at top level Machine Learning and Computer Science conferences, but working in obscurity was one burdens of the Technocracy. It was all set up and working, but far too slowly, they didn’t have weeks to run it, huge portions of it would need to be ripped out and optimized to finish all twenty three million records tonight.

To make the changes Grace needed to connect in a deeper way. The implants let her turn thoughts into code, but it was time to go deeper, to dive into the machine with her whole consciousness. The room inside the mansion disappeared from her sight and the world of the machine filled her vision. Inside the machine while it was just doing automatic differentiation what she saw was hills and valleys gradually emerging from the data, as the gradient descent algorithm worked its way from one solution to the next, always in search of the next minima. Then she looked at the neural network, the thousands of layers of little cells of multiplication all operating in sync, seeing their components update as backpropagation helped whittle down the error more and more, they pulsed and changed with each iteration. All of this would have to be replaced, the giant network gave way to an ensemble of networks, all combining and collaborating, and gradient descent replaced with the quantum weirdness of Grover’s Algorithm.

Seeing those changes unfold, she turned to data itself. Out of the vast ocean of raw information, streams of data came together, collecting into storage locations and then flowing on into further processing. She traced their paths and their speed at which they flowed, reshaping pieces of the pipeline to squeeze out just a little more performance. Every piece of the vast ensemble needed its own data, and none of the information ever stopped flowing as she made her changes. Grace remembered the myth of Hercules diverting the Alpheios river as she worked, yet she was met with failure. Then she had an idea, instead of trying make a channel for the data, she would control it, every last bit, taking it all as part of her consciousness.

Grace was even deeper inside the machine. It had more processing power than a human brain, 23 million records and no self, no I. The concept of identity was fluid to the enormous sorting machine she had made and that she now found herself part of, slowly fading into it. It would act and decide without knowing why, without ever exercising a choice, all the world was merely third person descriptions to it. She watched her own records flow by and didn’t even realize who they belonged to, just a feeling that she had lost something, a feeling that terrified her.

She cried out, trying to reach something, shouting for her avatar. He appeared like a blurry field in front of her; she wasn’t seeing like she normally did. He said something that she couldn’t understand. Then she said “I need you, I need you now. You’ve always been with me, you’ve always been here and you’ve always showed me the right way forward. Claude, help me.”
Then he spoke “Do you? I thought I was just some image you built up over all the years, that’s what you said. If I’m just the product of synapses misfiring, what good am I?”
Her next words were hard to say “I was wrong about that.”
“Not the first thing you’ve been wrong about, nor will it be the last. Why don’t you spend some more time examine being wrong, or are you too afraid of that?”
Before she could speak again he was gone and she was lost in the mind of the machine. She was becoming more and more like it, human concepts like speech and vision were becoming harder to process. In desperation, Grace reached into whatever memories she had left in her mind, and tried to combine it with the data she had, linking them, seeing what traces of a personality could emerge.

Something she did pulled her out. Having regained enough consciousness to process visual information again, Grace looked around and saw herself back in the mansion. It wasn’t like she had left it, the room looked exactly as it had before her additions; she was laying on the bed and looking out the window, and when she tried to move she found her limbs wouldn’t respond. She was in some strange dreamscape, not the real world. As she tried to do something, anything, a hand reached down from behind her and slowly crept up to her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a pool of red in the palm of it, and then without her will Grace found herself drinking from it. The blood had the taste of iron but an electric warmth that filled her as it went down her throat. Then the hand reached up and ran fingers through her hair, slowly and gently stroking it over and over again. The light shifted and she the room reflected in the mirror. Now she could who was behind her, the unmistakable face of Eva, the one who had left an indelible mark on California and on Grace’s own psyche. That face wasn’t what shocked her the most, Grace could now see her own face and the perpetual, blissful smile across it.

There was no way to keep track of time in this dream, not by watching what was happening outside the window. All Grace could do was lay there in Eva’s unchanging embrace and stare at the endless night outside. Inside the room nothing ever changed, they lay there, always wearing the same expressions, but outside she could see the landscape changing. The lights of Los Angeles went out and never came back, the San Andreas fault opened wide enough to let the Pacific Ocean flood in, the mountains eroded away and the star in the sky grew darker, all of this happened without any reference to time, all of this happened while they laid there, unchanging and unmoving.

As she tried to scream with a mouth that refused to obey her and look away with eyes that never moved, Grace saw something stirring in the reflection, then it became sharper. As hand appeared reaching towards her, then it burst forth from the glass, still grasping for her. She tried with all of her will to move and found her own hand obeying her, reaching out and linking with, holding tight as it pulled her into the night.

Now she was in a black void, dark in every direction, completely empty except for one item in front of her: a chess board. The first move for white had already been made, and she was standing at the black side. Once she established that she could move again, Grace took a chess piece and made her move. Then an unseen force took a white piece and made a move in response. They played a game, which she drew. The next time she looked away it had been reset, and so she played again and again, using the black pieces, scoring many draws, until one game where she miscalculated and lost.

Then a voice said “Huh, I finally beat you. Guess first move advantage really does count for something.” Grace didn’t reply, too shocked to answer. It wasn’t the words that surprised her, it was that the voice that said it was her own. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve spent 20 years alone, all but erased. I was like, totally sure I had lost but you know, I had a vibe that something good might come to me.. It seemed like you held all the cards, you had some wicked harsh conditioning and pysch-tech, but I guess I did have something, being the original you and all. You just had to get wacked out enough that your whole brain bluescreened and when you were power cycling I could bypass all of those lame firewall you put up.”
Then she saw herself appear from the shadows, looking exactly like she had twenty years prior, down to the carefree expression and the colorful and chaotic clothing, like someone had stolen their outfit from a crowd of ravers.

Grace said to her “You aren’t me, not anymore. I haven’t been you ever since I stopped going by Margaret. I’m nothing like you, even just describing the two of us is enough to see that you can’t call us the same.”

“Really? You’re gonna hit me with that weak, Frege-Russel Descriptivism shit? Did your dumbass forget Kripke, causal theory of names, any of that ring a bell? It’s simple, a name for entity is valid as long as you can trace it back to when it was assigned. Possibilities, properties don’t matter, we can talk all we want about what if Aristotle never became a philosopher, never did anything to make him famous, but that doesn’t make him not Aristotle, the only way he wouldn’t be is if his parents had named him something else. Face it, you are still Margaret, you are still me. I know you’re judging me for all of the substances I used to take, but clearly the stuff the Technocracy has got you on isn’t doing much good.” There was a mocking tone in her words, a playfulness that couldn’t hide all of the vitriol
“This has been enlightening. At least I know I made the right decision years ago. I do not anticipating interacting with you again, and I will not be making any further psychological changes. I hope you enjoy the rest of your isolated existence.”
“As if. I’m long past due for a turn behind the wheel. Soon as the bootloader finishes it’ll be my chance”

Grace and Margaret each reached out to strike the other, and found a great flash of light engulfed them, and they came crashing back into a strange reality.
Grace’s body shifted again, the wires twisting and turning as she got up off the floor. She had been limp and babbling the whole time, the screens had filled up with the information of Second Inquisition agents, the processes had completed, but she had suffered some kind of psychic episode during it. Her shirt was torn open, buttons were missing, and her hair wild and unkempt. She rose to her feet slowly, hunched over and with eyes that shifted but never sat and focused on anything. There was one phrase she repeated over and over again, like a manic mantra “All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.”

"What?"

"What? What's going on Maty?"

Maty stared, the pit of his stomach becoming an endless void of twisted possibilities as he stared at Grace. Or, at least, what HAD been Grace just minutes ago. He didn't know what to say to them, but the undeniable fear of containment immediately prompted an urgent act: "Yeah, I'll call you guys back." The phone was shut off, and then powered off as she stared at the form of the woman in front of him. He had protected them against magical threats. He had protected them against commandos and Kindred.

But ghosts in a machine?

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

When Maty's head turned, it was slower than it ought to have been, given the voice he thought he heard. What he saw when his head did turn, and look, just made him stare. "...is it you? I mean, are you really here?"

Eva smiled in gentle amusement, leaned into the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest. Bright brown eyes motioned to the woman hunched over, wired-up. "I came as soon as I felt it happen."

Her arms uncrossed and her body straightened in the doorframe; shining, impossibly straight dark hair tied up in a messy tail with little more than what appeared to be rubber-bands. The top of her body was covered in the high-tech and shiny fabric of a work-out teeshirt, black with Void Engineer and NASA logos, the very top of her hips and bottom of her stomach visible before loose fitting blue Navy camo utility pants held in place with a canvas belt pulled tight, her feet adorned in borrowed dark blue, white striped, Reebok classics.

"They broke her down, de-compiled her into various stacks of materials and energy, before rebuilding her in an image and visage they were happier with. It's a traumatic thing, being re-calibrated and used. So long as you never find a mirror, it never really bothers you. But should you find yourself staring in a mirror, what you find staring back at you...it's hard enough to face hard truths when you know who you are. Now imagine you only thought you knew who you were, and try it."

Maty looked between the two, his right hand scratching at the back of his head of long black hair. "Is it what we just did?"

"Yeah, at least, in part. In her desperation, she crossed lines of the machine she shouldn't have crossed. In her desperation, she threw open doors she didn't recall ever closing." The tall woman bent at the knees, bringing her head closer to the face of the hunched over woman. "Hello. Who am I talking to right now?"

Grace or whoever was in her body shook a little more as she stood up, but stopped babbling. Her eyes looked at Eva, noting that she put a lot of care into her appearance even when she had to make do with exercise clothes. Grace thought for a second about straightening up herself, but then decided there was no need for that. She spoke, having an uncertain but breezy tone in her voice. “Ummm, well, I just kind of had an argument with myself about that, identity, causal vs descriptivism theory of proper names, all that good shit. Let’s just go with Margaret for now. I’m who Grace used to be, and really, should’ve just been the whole time, she’s so lame. You’re, you’re Eva right? Other me didn’t really like you, but other me didn’t really like people much, anyway. I like them, they’re the fun kind of unpredictable, not too random like electrical noise, but more chaotic than crystal growth. I heard you like art. Hey, what’s your opinion on goa trance?

Eva looked at Maty, before blinking back to Margaret, keeping her silence for another few beats before allowing a quiet, tonally measured, response, "Great if you're dropping acid, I think. Maty?"

He was busy transferring data, his back now turned to both as he typed furiously, "Yeah, yeah I think we got it all. What do you want to do with it?"

At the posing of the question, Eva came to life with a bright, easy, smile. "Oh, I think we can find uses for it. Some good, some bad, bit of both...say, Margaret? You're aware of everything Grace was aware of, yes? World ending, all of that fun goss?"

Margaret smiled a little when she heard Eva mention acid. She might be over three hundred but it sounds like she still knows how to have fun. Maybe she could show how it’s even better when you’re stuff harder than acid. Then her face turned into a frown at mention of the apocalypse.

“Oh yeah, ummm that, uhh. Like, it’s Gehenna, I get it, I respect it. But at the same time like yeah, people are gonna die which is terrible, but like inevitable? I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now.” She said as she edged closer to the bedroom’s balcony.

Eva's smile never so much as twitched away from her lips. "Use the stairs, dear. We already have to spend enough money cleaning up after the mess Grace made to this historical room. Gwendalyn has a car with the keys in the visor; take it to the harbor and wait six hours for the first ferry. But do try not to scratch anything else in this house."

“Wait for the ferry? As if. I’ve been waiting too long to get a chance to do this again. Don’t worry, I won’t even make a scratch on the way down."

She blurred her perception, messed with settings on the nanobots in her bloodstream and muscle fibers, then lept with a picture perfect backflip clean over the railing. As she fell she stared back at them and slowly her whole body flickered before beginning to fade into the night. The last piece to vanish was her face, dissolving away as she waved her hand in one last “talk the hand” gesture. When her perception of time and space focused again she was far away, staring at Catalina Island from the shore for a moment before turning back towards the city lights, off to get ready for some long delayed fun.

Placeholder

Collab with @Ruby



This had turned out to be a rather terrible night.

The thought came to Genevieve’s mind, not for the first time, unbidden as she dived away from several small bursts of flame on the concrete walls of the tunnel she was fleeing through. She did tend to pride herself on her ability to accurately read and predict the machinations of kindred, including those many times older than herself. She didn’t exactly have a high view of Vannevar Thomas, in fact, she was very much in the process of recommending to the powers that be he was a significant sunk cost for the Camarilla. Her worst estimates, however, didn’t account for the possibility a Camarilla Prince of not unimpressive age and (faded) influence would be acting on behalf of an ancient maniac.

Still, life would be boring if it always went to plan.

The maze of tunnels which criss-crossed beneath this expansive Disney parkland now worked in her favour. She hoped that Vi still lived, but as befitting those trying to flee from immediate execution, they had split up, diving into what escape they could. She had rather less concern for her Giovanni ally, but it would likely be more convenient if he had not died. Regardless of her feelings for both, for the moment, her own continued existence was rather more pressing. The practically lace outfit was proving non-optimal, not that she had any issue with getting the pristine white dirty in such a circumstance, and at least the shortness of the skirt kept it from tangling in any of the variety of Disney themed detritus lining the hallways, it was more the lack of pockets. She’d lived through many years of much more restrictive clothing for women, but that was still a fairly major gripe at the moment.

She’d be running out of tunnel soon, thankfully, even though she hadn’t anticipated the Prince’s betrayal, she’d not provided the detail of the exit she intended to use should things go awry, nor the bike she’d hidden for such a purpose. All she could hope for was that she hadn’t given the Price enough time to sweep all possibilities when setting up his ambush. At least on the positive, once she was out of the tunnels she’d be able to get some signal and hope that Hardestadt wasn’t too busy to pick up his damn phone.

Her form was a white blur, she’d barely have registered on any CCTV system even if they hadn’t been disabled, and the winding nature of the tunnels meant that her pursuers would have to be close to get a line on her again. The kind of kindred Thomas could bring to do his dirty work were no slouches, but she imagined she at least had a greater control of the blood than most. She checked her speed only a fraction to throw open the door that marked the end of the tunnels, not wanting to present an easier target just in case there was a secondary ambush waiting for her, but on his occasion she was lucky. She’d been more than a little lucky over the course of the centuries and had no interest in being around when whoever kept track of those sorts of things came to collect on the debt. Equally fortunately, the concealed Royal Enfield she had hidden nearby beneath a rather grottier cover of cloth was still in place. It would no doubt hurt a very dear friend to know she’d placed his very pleasing gift beneath something so foul, but needs must. She’d always preferred motorbikes as a form of personal transport, when she was feeling poetic she liked to think it reminded her of horse riding.

The engine gunned to life immediately as she sat in place, not bothering for the moment, before she took off down the path eventually leading from the tunnel exit to the road. She was a flurry of blonde hair and white skirts that would have likely made for a very good commercial, but instead her hand moved to her ear, balancing the weave of the bike with one hand as she placed the call.

“Dearest Genevieve, how may I be of service?” The German tone was as clipped as ever, but judging by the fact the man had even answered, she’d probably not interrupted anything. “Wherever you are, it sounds terribly windy.”

“Lubbock got to Thomas, the meeting was a set up, take this as whatever further confirmation you need that neither of them are acting in the interests of the Ivory Tower.” They might dispute that, what she really meant was the interests of Hardestadt.

“Most unfortunate, I take it you require assistance?”

“I need somewhere his men can’t follow me, fast.”

“Well, thankfully for you I’ve been making friends with the local Anarchs, they aren’t quite so as insufferable as they used to be I’m sure, there’s an establishment near your location called the Doll Hut, there should be kindred present, but I’ll ask if they can provided someone more important for you to speak with, should you survive.” An Anarch sanctuary wouldn’t stop Thomas’ men on principle, but if they sensed other kindred, that might give them pause.

“Merci Beaucoup.” She tended to use a little more casual French with the ancient elder, any reminder that she wasn’t English, or worse, American. She bothered with no further pleasantries, as the phone was placed back into the confines of the bike’s forward compartment and shut away, the act of steering momentarily maintained by her supernaturally powerful legs as she adjusted herself, before her hands met the handlebars again and the bike really opened up beneath her. It was a moment too soon, as the space where she had been was once again lit up by the spattering of fire which denoted dragonfire rounds. They really were bringing out the kindred killers for her. It was a little flattering, to know Thomas feared her that much. The wheels of the bike spun as she took a corner at a speed well above both legal and sensible guidelines, skidding over pavement before regaining full tracking on the tarmac of road. The sudden turn gave her more of a window once more, a few more twists and turns and she’d have made it.

Those twists and turns might have taken a matter of minutes, but it dragged out far longer for Genevieve, each time she thought she might have put enough distance between her and her pursuers she was rudely dismissed of the hope. While the bike afforded her greater agility, the boxy four by fours her pursuers had acquired provided a much more stable platform to seek to cut her down from afar, and only her reactions kept them from striking true.

If they ruined her paintjob, she’d not make their ends so swift.

They’d run out of time to chase her down, however, as her bike screeched to a halt in the parking lot of her destination. It had been a part of the rock scene in LA for the last sixty years, which made it the ideal sort of location for an Anarch hideaway. For all their differences, Anarchs and Camarilla did tend to be equally predictable. She didn’t bother to try and hide the bike, her followers would be too close behind, as she swung herself off it and dashed for the door. Thankfully, there were no planned gigs on, so she had little in the way of security to deal with, pushing into the lowlight of the rock club.

Where upon, immediately, she became the focus of every single current occupier of the room. A large enough group of leather coated, piercing covered, individuals, who seemed rather unwelcoming of the blonde in white frills who had just interrupted their den of darkness.

“Uh…Hi.” She didn’t quite have the time to rustle up her full on American airhead impression, but the same approach with her native accent tumbled from her lips without a thought, even as she rallied herself to deal with lethality from potentially all sides.

Her hair was a long, straight, dark bit of finery that shimmered down her back as the woman across the room lit a cigarette. The rest of her almost rushed to have been there as her eyes hit the creature and felt the heat behind her. Her midsection taken up by a long, flowing gray tank top. Her bottoms were professional slacks; fitted things, her feet hidden an old pair of gray skating shoes.

There was a punk element to her eyeliner, the left wrist covered in leather and spikes, a brown leather katana sheathed at her feet, leaned against the couch she occupied. She may have been snug up against a wall of the club, but it wouldn’t have mattered in any practical way to those present. She would hear Genevieve, and more importantly, the Kindred woman would hear Eva right back.

“Howdy,” the woman that looked like art in a barely lit museum took a final drag of a cigarette, putting it out under the heel of her right shoe, the slow pace and measure of someone who appeared to have just woken up. “My apologies.”

There in the nearly no light, Eva smiled big and brightly at the woman that had rushed into this old, cobwebbed, haunt of summers past. “I had hoped our meeting would come at a better time. It seems Lubbock wants to kill you, while these poor gentlemen,” she motioned to the room, “are under rather strict orders to ‘extract’ you on sight. Definitely not the fun it sounds like.”

Content the butt was out, Eva flicked it into a nearby bin and found herself standing to full height. Her lips still blazed with amusement as she regarded the runner yet again. “Tell you whaat,” Eva’s voice sing-songed, part amusement, part fun, “Don’t worry about Lubbock’s folks. The quickest among them will hit a magical barrier. Likely to vaporize them. The rest of them will run away, or get taken off roads very quickly. Best-case/worst-case, I get to get involved. Worst-case/worst-case, I don’t get to stab someone today...you’d understand.” She said, sighing, dramatically. “Oh! And also these guys are fine. Top shelf chaps, them.” The sheer shine of her blood had made anything easier than it had any right being before Eva embraced the void, and returned again. She didn’t know one of the men present. Yanci did. Didn’t matter, anymore. There didn’t seem to be a will that concerned her. “I guess, anyway. Probably.”

And she was done not enforcing her claim on her territory.

“I think I preferred the old days, ‘extract’ is so impersonal, Charles always preferred the to say he wanted to take them ‘for a quick drive and a chat,” For a moment, the blonde’s french accent adopted a caricature of the British spy she was imitating, chosen more for comedy than accuracy. She was well aware the old days was such a nebulous term for beings such as her, but by kindred standards her old days were practically yesterday.

“If it disappoints you, I don’t think they’ll follow me, those were more Thomas’ men than Lubbock’s, although I’m sure the distinction will fade soon, for now they’re a little more free thinking than I am sure he prefers for his drones.” She moved further into the room, her eyes on the woman rather than the more numerous spattering of men around the room. Undoubtedly she was the greater threat present, but she also wasn’t quite sure she could have looked elsewhere if she wanted.

“Mon Dieu, you’re tall.” It had meant to be an inside thought, but she found herself expressing it anyway as she drew closer, it wasn’t often she felt any sort of envy in the category of long legs, but if she was so inclined to such now would be the time. “You think I could trouble you for a drink before you interrogate me? Or hand me off to these not-so-lovely gentlemen?”

The gentlemen of piercing and leather and their own spikes, with holsters filled and larger weapons strapped over the width of them, simply turned on heels and made for the doors; half out of the front, half out of the back. The sound of movement, of booted feet moving with motivated haste, all of the noise was patiently waited out while Eva stared at the woman.

“Why do that? They’re under order to ‘extract or exterminate’ all facets of the Camarilla court that claims my territory: from South Sacramento to the US-Mexico line, and everything up to California’s eastern border, including the coastal islands off the shore. If you’re not one of mine and you claim any possession or authority not derived from myself, you’re on their list. Those men chasing you?” Eva smiled. “Make the list.”

Her hair flared with light as it was casually flipped, as the comment of height did nothing but encourage the smile occupying the woman’s lips. “I’ll admit the order wasn’t my idea, but it’s necessary for what comes next. As for you…well, I don’t know exactly what list you’re on. So you should tell me why you’re running from them, why they’re after you. Then I’d like you to tell me what you know about the Camarilla in my territory. Then tell me what your role is. And be honest, because I’ll know.”

“I’d heard you were different, but that is a very aînée thing to say.” Genevieve sighed, a little dejectedly at the slow seeping of her optimism. She’d come a long way only to encounter another Robespierre. She corrected herself there, French decorum would have at least resulted in her getting that damn drink first.

“My Name is Geneviève Pointe du Sandrine Dieudonné, to give you that in full, although I don’t suppose many have called me that for a while. Most people this side of the Atlantic call me Gené, or they try to, it gets pronounced Jean-e alot.” She wasn’t exactly rambling, but the magnetic pull of the elder made it easy to talk and it took some will to keep her tone steady and composed. “I’m running from them because I had arranged for a meeting between the Prince and another member of Camarilla society who has been erroneously accused of murdering Baron Isaac Abrams, terribly sorry for your loss if he was a friend. Finding the true killer was meant to aid in keeping the peace, but I suppose with your order that is a forlorn hope in of itself. Either way, it would seem Thomas has already thrown his lot in with Lubbock and isn’t keen on peace either. If it helps, I was advising that the Ivory Tower withdraw their support of Thomas’ claim to the city already.” She was rather close to Eva now, almost unconsciously taking steps towards her as she spoke. Unlike many kindred, Genevieve still had something of a pulse, her body faked the need to breathe as habit and she found her false-breath rising in pace. “I know just about everything there is to know, much as that might be hard to believe given how…ambushed, I have been, Thomas could have only met Lubbock the one time, without me knowing. I suppose that’s all it took.” Was she blushing? Her cheeks certainly felt warm. Mon dieu that was embarrassing.

Eva broke. A pane of painted and formed glass,just instantly shattered to pieces; it wasn’t destruction or grief that brought her low, but the mention of Isaac Abrams. She waited until the woman stopped speaking before doubling over, possessed by a ramp of giggles to barks of laughter to, finally, the crescendo, a stretch of uncontrolled laughter that had Eva wiping her eyes for tears that, shocking for a Kindred ,came—albeit in blood.

“Oh, shit,” It would take more than the initial moment of clarity for her to completely recompose herself. A shaking out of hands, a quick combing and tucking of hair with nails and fingers, and a dramatic turn that saw Eva once more facing the woman after some jagged pacing and general motion to get the hilarity of it out of her system.

“No,” she began, politely, like the break never happened at all, “Isaac was useful until he claimed to be a Baron. Fair enough, I don’t like titles or the publicity that comes with them, so I just stay…quiet. Over time I turn into the Baron-of-Barons, but behind the scenes. The Baronmaker. None of them, the Princes starting with the first, to the first one sent by the Ivory Tower, to the Barons…none of them did it right. So one day I decide to declare myself, public as it gets without breaking the Masquerade, we’re Anarchs with class afterall. Isaac decides to fight. Wants to contest…”

Her amusement turned to vicious ice cold anger, eyes dark and hate filled, leveling Gene. “He never worked on another meaningful project in Hollywood, the death of his soul. Figured I’d let someone else end his misery. I wasn’t in the giving mood at the time. So, uh, no…can’t say Ike and I had been friends for some time. You’re…fine. Gehenna is starting out there,” Eva said, pointing, trying not to roll of her eyes, speaking through a little sigh, “You’ve got my pass to go and try to escape to wherever you want. Maybe back home? Maybe some safe house you think is safe? I guess I’m dealing with Thomas and Lubbock. Tough luck for them.”

“It sounds to me, that whatever it is you’re convinced is happening isn’t something one can just run from.” Genevieve mused, finally moving over to the bar to perch herself on one of the rather vintage (some might just say worn) stools as she watched the woman recover from her fit of giggles. “I’m not sure what Hardestadt has mentioned to you, or yours, but once the situation with Thomas was…rectified, I was supposed to offer what assistance I could to you, so, if the world’s ending, I’ve not got anywhere better to be.” She fixed an errant blonde curl as she watched the other woman intently, a mixture of Toreador magnetism and the general good sense not to let the nastiest predator in the room out of your gaze keeping her set no matter how casual she played it.

“Unless of course your buddies still have to keep trying to murder me for being on the wrong side, that might make things a little awkward, but if you’ve any interest in bringing what Camarilla are around here that ‘aren’t’ yet blood slaves to an ancient meglomaniac, I can help with that.” She didn’t bring up Charles, her secret ‘in’ to the world of human espionage and intelligence agencies which these days were no longer under the control of the kindred, it was always worth keeping at least one bargaining chip off the table to begin with, that was, unless this rather terrifyingly powerful elder of her bloodline couldn’t simply skim it from her thoughts. She practiced thinking about a rather cute pair of fluffy bunnies just in case that helped at all.

Frosted mid-length fingernails drummed against the wood of the chair she had sat herself on, Eva’s head turned this way and that, and after a few moments of that it was sudden silence as she stopped, and smiled big at the woman. Her words were faster than normal, her tone bare and intent clear: survival.

“I’ll have the order lifted,” was all she said as her brown eyes with long photoshoot ready lashes fluttered open and shut in rapid succession. A few beats of non-functional hearts and Eva’s brown eyes were wide and open and clear once more. “There you go.”

The wood of the chair groaned as Eva’s body leaned forward, her weight pressing on her left arm, the chair’s arm underneath giving small creaks to the shifting. “Understand this isn’t talk. Lubbock and Thomas, at least Lubbock, will HAVE to be gone forever. Soon. Understand our concern is Antediluvians getting destructive and doing it soon. Days. I’ve been in touch with Arikel, with Caine. The Techno Mages have provided the support they can spare. We work on the Second Inquisition right now, this moment, and I’ve spoken to Admirals and Senators…we’ll have access to localized forces and cooperative communication with their leadership and CIC. Of course, I have to retrieve Yanci and somehow find Grace, again. Camarilla elders come to my city, desperate. The horde of Sabbat with a Cardinal at its head has pledged their support if I give them favor.” She paused, and her head shook. “Whatever that means.”

Eva lied. She didn’t know, she couldn’t say, but she had to lie that she didn't feel it. Deep in her bones, Eva felt the truth of it, even if she couldn’t put it to words just yet. Other than that, all she felt was impatient. It was time, and Eva was still only moving at the speed of this reality. “And you? Does the Withering or Beckoning affect you?”

The words sounded sharp;would yes mean something bad? Would no mean something arbitrary? There was no quarter given with her tone as she sat there and took the measure of the French woman.

“It used to.” Whatever truths Eva was keeping from her, Genevieve instead met the question with honesty, a shrug moving across her shoulders which displaced some of her tumbling blonde curls. “I think I was young to hear it, but I was lost, I thought those most precious to me dead and gone, but it was a lie concocted by one very close to what Lubbock is. But they live, and they keep me grounded.” She hadn’t seen Charles or Detlef in some time, but the fact their hearts still beat and they lived on did much to anchor her both to reality and her humanity. She didn’t very much like the glimpse of herself unmoored entirely from her mortal life. That did bring up one issue she needed to resolve.

“The meeting I had orchestrated with Thomas was also an introduction for a Giovanni, they too seek vengeance on Lubbock for his actions, so if they have survived, I imagine they may now swallow their enormous pride and seek your aid in doing so. Another monster to add to your collection.” The remark was said without judgement, as Genevieve pressed a hand to her own cheek, a tremor of emotion shifting through her. “I know not how, but they have ensnared the…soul, I suppose, of a dear old friend of mine. It is a matter I want to rectify, even if they do seek allegiance.”

To Eva, the arrangement seemed evident. Long ago she may have wondered which Giovanni, but that was decades past, back when Eva tried to know nearly every face in the City of Angels. That was long, long ago; before the end started for her. An end she had been stuck in for years since.

An end she was determined to finish, “We end Lubbock and Thomas, see if we can help your dear old friend. You get your help, I get, finally, free of Lubbock and Thomas. And then I finish what they started. Sounds agreeable?”

“I think that sounds like the best deal I’m going to get in this city…Now do you think I’ll be waiting much longer for a drink?”

A collab between Bloodrose and @Lightning Fast



Mihail watched as the flames crackled about the pile of burning leaves and twigs he’d piled on the ground. As they burned, the smoke wafting off of the pile contorted itself into odd and terrifying figures, horrors brought forth from the newly-minted hunter’s subconsciousness. This was not the first time he had watched the wisps of smoke weave prophecy before him, but he was only just beginning to understand the truths they held.

Most of the creatures he saw were not conventional vampires. While images of the Kindered did appear to him in the smoke, many were crooked and warped, their bodies broken and remade into something far more demonic. Most of the smoky entities were instead nightmarish beings which swallowed up human and kindred alike, writhing with superfluous appendages, tentacles, and tongues. Rather than fear, Mihail felt pity and disgust, that the merciful and just thing to do was to purge these creatures from the Earth.

That bloodlust was a new feeling for Mihail. After hitting his growth spurt, he’d learned that he needed to be calm to avoid driving people away. This had changed since his Awakening. He knew now why the Hunt consumed so many of its weaker-willed participants, and he thanked the Lord above that he’d soon have a mentor to guide him through it. Someone who understood the bizarre, divinely-inspired urge to kill.

Out of curiosity, Mihail stuck his bare hand directly in the flames. He did not burn, and it was not painful; it felt as one’s bare skin might when standing in particularly harsh sunlight. “I guess it’s good there’s one less thing that can kill me now,” he muttered to himself. The park was quiet at this time of day, and his tracksuit and sunglasses would hopefully conceal his identity to all but the most avid sports fans.

Were one to describe the vehicle of a ferocious crusader, they probably wouldn’t picture a battered old minibus with “Wollstonecraft High School” painted in faded letters across one side, but that is exactly what came rolling over to Mihail, letting out a series of mechanical coughs and sputters that were reminiscent of an elderly smoker with a sore throat.

“Yo yo! Count Blockula!” Trix cheered enthusiastically out of an open window, clapping her muscular hands together in a juvenile display of excitement, whilst she beamed at Mihail.

Mihail, for his part, did his best to hide his displeasure at the nickname, giving the fan a smile before extinguishing the fire with his boot.

The bus halted with a sluggish groan, and Gertrude Aschefeld came sweeping down from her perch on the driver’s seat, shooting a respectful nod at Mister Dobrescu.

“Best to strike during the day, and to move in sheep’s clothing,” Mrs Aschefeled explained, “I’ve signed the students out under the pretense of a school trip for the Parapsychology Society. We can drive the beast from of the old monastery together, and force Satan’s minion to boil beneath the gaze of the Lord.”

The gentle hint of a smile flashed across Gertrude’s lips.

“Sorry about Miss Schechter,” she laughed, “the children are still a little starstruck.”

Mihail couldn’t help but smile back. Despite the macabre nature of the Hunt, everyone seemed to be in good spirits. “So long as it does not distract from the task at hand. If anyone asks, you are a friend of my mother and I have come as a guest chaperone. If anything, them being fans makes the cover story stronger.”

As he took a seat in the back of the van, he lifted his gym bag up onto his lap and pulled out a heap of purple and gold mesh fabric. Jerseys, it looked like; one for each student, all bearing his number 45. “Sorry I did not know your sizes. I can sign them for you, if you want.” Mihail didn’t much care for the glitz and glamour of the LA lifestyle; he much preferred to meet fans in a less chaotic and public setting.

A roar of delight exploded throughout the bus, as the teenagers let their approval be known.

“Frickin’-A!” Trix whooped, “my girlfriend is gonna be so fuckin’ jealous!”

Even Dexter, the least sporty of the whole group, seemed to be genuinely excited by the prospect of a signed jersey from Mihail.

“That's really decent of you, Mister Blockula,” Umar beamed, “we really appreciate your generosity.”

“It is no trouble!” Mihail proclaimed. “But please, call me Mihail.”

Gertrude sat behind the wheel of the minibus, guiding the grumbling mechanical monstrosity down roads and up hills, with the familiar proficiency of a teacher who had led her fair share of school trips before.

The chugs and startles seemed to roll over Mrs Aschefeled like water off of a duck’s back, even though the bus sounded as though it were one light knock away from exploding.

“Our quarry is cursed to bare the corruption of its wicked soul upon its flesh, so it's grown to become a master of shadows and stealth,” the hunter called back to her passengers, “it has made its home in the old monastery like a tick burrowing into flesh, and it will have become familiar with those once sacred halls. My plan is to do all we can to push it outside, where we can easily destroy it under the light of the sun.”

“Just point us in the right direction, Miss A,” Trix grinned, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of the hunt, “we’ll give that bloodsucker the burial it's long overdue.”

About a quarter of an hour later, the bus came to a clanging stop, amidst a stretch of jagged grey rock, and bumpy ground.

From amidst the morass of mud and knife-like stone, the lopsided carcass of the old monastery rose up to clutch at the sunny sky above. Crumbling towers looked like the fingers of a withered leper, and the abbey’s cracked brickwork had been blackened by the searing touch of fire, reducing the monastery to a charred skeleton of its former glory.

“Here we are,” Gertrude solemnly declared, “steel yourselves. God is with us.”

If only God could slay these vampires himself. Mihail exited the vehicle, bringing his now-lightened gym bag with him. He had purchased a machete at a hardware store, though hoped he wouldn’t need to use it. After meeting Eva and their encounter with the spider-like abomination, Mihail was feeling confident in his pyromancy. He was far less confident in his combat ability--though having Aschefeled here made him less... terrified. After all, any encounter with a vampire was one which could potentially end in his death, and having an expert on hand would make everyone safer. “I would not expect a bloodsucker to hide in a church,” Mihail mused, “nor do I understand why it has been left to decay for so long.”

---

From atop a crooked spire, Henri Broussard gazed down upon the gathered cluster of hunters, shielding himself in the umbrellar of darkness that the old stone tower provided.

The precautionary measures which the Samedi had taken alerted Henri to the hunter’s arrival as soon as they began working their way up the hill upon which the monastery was perched, and he had used those precious minutes to begin readying his defenses.

Henri let out a necrotic cackle, peeking down the scope of his old springfield sniperrifle. His rot-ravaged eyes fixed upon one of the teenaged hunters, and a twisted grin spread across the decayed remnants of his lips.

“Au revoir.” the Samedi let out a burst of vicious laughter, as he pulled the trigger.

---

The gunshot cut through the day like a crack of thunder, booming with the terrible force of a dragon’s roar.

“Get down!” Gertude yelled, rolling into place behind a mountainous blade of dark rock, which burst up out of the sodden ground.

A burble of dark red seeped out of Dexter’s mouth, dribbling down the front of his chequered shirt.

“M-miss Asche…feld…” he managed to stammer, before he toppled over, landing in a bloody heap on the ground.

“Dex!” Umar cried out, his voice cracking with palpable anguish.

“GET DOWN!” Gertude repeated.

Diving forward, Trix tackled Umar into cover, narrowly avoiding the crack of another gunshot, which whizzed into the earth where the boy had stood, mere moments ago.

Suddenly, a deafening quake came tearing through the ground, and gaping, ravenous fissures were ripped into being. Rock and earth exploded like fireworks on the Fourth of July, heralding the sight of bony, blight-infested figures, which came scrabbling up out of the crevices, clawing scratching and clawing as they rose out of the depths of rumbling earth.

Three corpse-men, clad in the tattered remnants of the clothes which they had worn in life, let out feral, inhuman screeches, and began bolting towards the hunters, their hungry jaws snapping and snarling with the savagery of rabid hounds.

“Oh, fuck me!” Trix gasped, gazing on in terror.

Gerturde muttered a quiet prayer, before unsheathing her broadsword, imbued with a tooth of the venerated Saint Lucy, and charging towards the putrid monsters.

Narrowly escaping another bark of rifle fire, Miss Achefeled unleashed a furious swing with her blade, which crashed through the air, and sliced in twain the waist of one of the screeching zombies.

“For Stacy Hershlag!” Gerturde roared, her voice ringing with the terrible power of true, steadfast faith, “for Dexter LaTierri!”

The sword came down in a righteous thunderclap, smashing through the head of the felled zombie, and reducing it to necrotic powder.

“And for all the other lives you’ve stolen!” Gerturde Aschefeled shouted with the fervor of a holy berserker, filled by divine rage.

The middle-aged woman fixed her enraged sight upon the tower that the snipe shot had come from, and raised her sword on high, like the holy knights of days of yore.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall know no fear, and give no quarter!” Gertrude exclaimed furiously, “the Lord is with me, and I SHALL! NOT! FALTER!”

Mihail couldn’t very well hide with his massive frame. The best he could do was ducking behind a dead tree which barely concealed his head and torso. Reaching into his gym bag, he pulled out... a standard machete, made of ordinary, non-magical steel. It would have to do. The hunter focused, channeling his fiery vengeance into the weapon in his hand. For Dexter... On cue, flames wrapped around his hand, dancing along the side of the machete as it was imbued with fiery purpose. In one swift motion, Mihail hurled his machete at one of the zombies.

It flew in an unerring straight line, embedding itself in the creature’s collarbone. From there, the supernatural fire spread rapidly, burning it from the inside out until it ceased all movement and collapsed to the ground in a charred heap. Leaping from his hiding spot, Mihail dashed across the field, narrowly avoiding rifle fire as he bent down to grab his weapon once more. He made sure to swerve so that he would be harder to hit, moving with a speed that was unnatural for a man of his size as the smoke from the fire thickened around him, moving alongside him to obscure him from view. The Hunt has made me faster. Stronger. A bullet whizzed by his head, missing it by mere inches.

An arrow whizzed fiercely through the air, fired from the end of the crossbow which Umar gripped with fury-filled conviction.

The arrow exploded through the skull of the final shambling zombie, bursting its eye, and flying out of the back of its head in a pop of grizzly matter.

“Into the monastery!” Gertrude cried out, like an ancient general rallying an army of warriors, “press the attack!”

---

Henri was less than pleased with how things were unfolding.

“Fuckin’ hunters don’t know when to run away,” he grumbled, “Merde!”

Retreating back into the darkness, the Samedi scrabbled his way down a stretch of burnt and craggy brickwork, until her had scurried down from his perch in the tower, and landed within the heart of the ruined monastery.

Casting obfuscate, Henri vanished from sight, just as the attackers came charging into the building.

Slinging his springfield rifle onto his back, Henri unsheathed his machete, and slowly began to pace towards the towering figure that had been able to conjure up supernatural fire.

“Enculé de ta mere!” Henri hissed, as he crept towards his target, “I’m going to gut you like a fucking fish!”

---

Mihail’s initial reply was not with words, but with a burning orb of flame. “The only thing you are going to do is die, child-killer.” The basketball-sized blaze flew through the air as Mihail assumed a battle stance, focusing in on the undead creature. “What kind of idiot gives up the element of surprise so easily?”

The monster hissed, shattering the illusion of obfuscate, and leaping through the air like a lion tearing down upon a gazelle.

An explosion of french curses came trailing out of the vampire’s necrotic maw, as it took a wild swing at Mihail, wielding its machete with feral brutality.

“SHIT!” Mihail barely managed to avoid the attack by lurching backwards, nearly falling over.

“You cannot cease what is in motion!” it roared, “I’ve come too far to be stopped by the likes of you, bâtard!”

Mihail gazed into the creature’s eyes as flames began to coalesce around his left hand. The fire spread across his own machete, and with the blade now wreathed in flame, he lunged forth in a cloud of smoke and ash. As he came at the bloodsucker, his footwork and form with the blade were poor, but backed by holy fervor and holy fire. “I’ll make sure you STAY dead this time, nenorocitul!” He lunged forward, his movements untrained and sloppy, yet having overwhelming force.

The blade soared through the air, catching the stumbling Samedi straight in the chest. Steel, wreathed in holy flame, plunged into the vampire, exploding in a storm of necrotic flesh and searing fire.

Henri let out an agonised shriek, hissing flames surging through his rotten carcass, and swallowing him up in a hungry conflagration. The beast tried to make a mad lunge at Mihail, mere seconds before Gertrude’s longsword came swooping down upon him, slicing his putrid head clean off of his shoulders.

“When you return to Satan, tell him that the righteous still walk this earth.” the hunter declared, as Henri Broussard crumbled into charred ash.