Chapter 169: A Familiar Bald Head.
Mary dropped the knife from my neck and stepped back. The blade clattered into the sink with a sharp metallic ring.
"Everything okay?" Becky called from the bedroom, voice tight.
"Yes," I called back. "Under control."
Mary turned the shower off. The sudden silence was loud. Water streamed down her naked body in final rivulets, tracing paths over her breasts, down the flat plane of her stomach, and between her thighs before dripping onto the tile with soft, irregular plinks.
She looked at me, water still beading on her lashes.
"So you want me to come with you," she said.
"It’s the mission," I said.
"It’s fine," she said. "I’ll come."
"You’re sure?"
She stepped back into the tub and resumed bathing like the knife had never been in her hand, running a bar of soap slowly over her shoulders, down her arms, the lather sliding over her skin in white streaks. "Who do you think called CGI?"
That stopped me cold.
Becky appeared in the doorway, sword still drawn, and took in the scene: me standing there, Mary calmly washing herself in the tub like we were guests at a spa.
"Rebecca Donman," Mary said without turning around, naming her perfectly.
"Told you it was under control," I said to Becky. "She’s coming willingly."
Becky studied the scene for a long second — the steam, the naked woman, the discarded knife in the sink — then nodded once. "I’ll be in the living room." She withdrew, the metallic coating from her ability still spreading across every surface, sealing the apartment like a tomb.
"I was expecting CGI," Mary said, running water over her shoulders again. "I’m done, Bram."
"Done with what?"
"With everything I’ve been doing." She turned slightly, water cascading down her back. "I’m a ghost. I worked for the Veyrons for years. Removing whoever they wanted removed."
"A ghost?"
She stood and wrapped herself in a white robe, the fabric clinging to her wet skin. "An assassin. On your last mission, two ghosts were embedded. One a protector. One a cleaner."
I connected it before she finished.
"So why turn yourself in?" I asked.
"Safety," she said.
[LEWD LEVELING SYSTEM]
[The primordial families are divided.]
I held the notification without fully understanding it yet.
"Lady Veyron is a good woman," Mary said. "But some of her allies want me dead."
And there it connected. The conspiracy wasn’t a single united front. There were fractures inside the families, alliances and disagreements, and Mary had ended up on the wrong side of one of them.
"So CGI custody is protection," I said.
"CGI custody is the one place those allies can’t reach me cleanly," she said. "I’d rather be inside the walls’ system than dead in a shadow."
She tightened the robe around herself and looked at me, water still dripping from the ends of her hair onto the tile floor in soft, rhythmic drops. The steam between us was beginning to thin, revealing the sharp lines of her face and the calm certainty in her eyes.
"Let’s go," she said, moving toward the bedroom.
Everything was running smoothly. Successful missions at CGI were buying me something valuable — peace, position, room to move while I worked the mission my father had started before I was born.
I followed. She dropped the robe without hesitation. It pooled at her feet in a damp heap. She dried off with quick, efficient strokes — towel dragging over her shoulders, down her back, across her breasts and stomach, water streaking down her thighs. She dressed in silence: dark pants sliding up her legs, shirt pulled over her head, the fabric clinging slightly to still-damp skin.
"I never thanked you," I said, while she dressed. "For the forest. For pulling me out."
"I was paying a debt," she said, sliding on her boots.
"Thank you."
"It was nothing," she said, in the tone of someone closing a subject.
"You said you were expecting agents," I said, shifting away from it. "So why the knife in the bathroom?"
She looked at me. She had already answered that and wasn’t going to do it twice. Fully dressed now, she straightened her collar with a sharp tug.
"Let’s go," she said.
[Mary Stam. Class 7. Shadow walking.]
[Cunning. Fast. Dangerous.]
She walked out to the living room. I followed.
Becky was on the couch, waiting, sword resting across her knees.
"Done?" she asked.
"Yeah."
Becky looked at Mary. Whatever history ran between them sat thick in the air, unspoken. Becky stood, sword in hand.
"Don’t play games with us," she said, and moved toward the door.
"She won’t," I said.
Becky reached for the handle and pulled it open. Something threw her backward.
A violent shock cracked through the room like invisible lightning. It lifted Becky clean off her feet, body snapping rigid mid-air, blonde braid whipping, sword flying from her hand. She slammed hard into the sofa, the impact driving the breath from her lungs in a sharp gasp. The couch skidded back several inches across the floor with a screech of wood on wood.
The door hung open. A shadow moved in the hallway, too fast to track.
Mary’s eyes flicked to the doorway, then back to me. A faint, knowing smile touched the corner of her lips, small and sharp as a blade.
Becky lay unconscious on the sofa, body slumped at an awkward angle, chest rising in shallow, uneven breaths. I held my position, feet planted, charge humming quietly beneath my skin like a second pulse, eyes locked on the open doorway.
Mary stood ready beside me.
The door pushed wider with a slow creak.
A familiar bald head appeared in the frame, catching the low light like polished bone.
He looked at Mary first. Then his gaze slid to me.
"Missed me?" Owen said, voice low and mocking.
Mary dissolved into shadow.
Her form melted instantly, body collapsing into black, formless smoke that poured toward the floor like spilled ink. She tried to slip through the wall, a dark streak racing across the metallic coating Becky had laid down.
Owen pressed his palm flat against the iron-coated wall. The charge exploded out of him.
Blue-white electricity surged through every surface Becky had transmuted — walls, floor, ceiling — crackling in bright, jagged forks. The entire apartment lit up with violent, snapping light.
Mary reappeared, shadow form torn apart by the current. She dropped hard to the floor, body solid again, collapsing in a heap near the couch, limbs twitching from the shock.
I stayed standing. Both women down now.
Owen’s charge still crackled at his fingertips, dancing in bright arcs between his knuckles. Mine ran quiet under my skin, waiting.
We looked at each other across the apartment. The last time I had seen him he was driving away from the Fallen City with a stolen specimen and a stolen car, having fired a gun to wake the infected.
A ghost. A cleaner. Mary had named it without naming him, and now here he was, sent for her by whoever wanted her dead instead of in custody.
"Owen," I said.
"You should have stayed in the Fallen City," he said, stepping fully inside. "This isn’t your fight, outsider."
