Chapter 277: Chapter 277
Zaeryn didn’t bother with the chair. Instead of sitting down where she clearly wanted him to sit, he walked across the room toward her.
"Drop the report, it can wait." He suggested.
"Tempting," She laughed and rested her arms on his chest. "But anything else can wait. I need to send the High Commander a report."
Zaeryn exhaled in something close to annoyance and turned toward the chair that was already waiting for him. He lowered himself into it.
"How long until this isn’t a thing?" he asked.
"For as long as possible. You still need to get yourself checked every now and then, for various reasons."
Zaeryn nodded, though he wasn’t happy about it.
"You’re very healthy," Daphne went on. "But you should know that given your impossible anomaly situation, it’s only sensible that we keep taking tests to monitor any changes."
She crossed to a small tray on the side counter and picked up the syringe. Then she came back to him, the syringe in one hand, her eyes already on his arm.
Her cool fingertips traced the vein along his forearm with a touch that was gentle but surgical. Without a countdown, without warning, without giving him a moment to brace, she slid the needle straight in.
Zaeryn’s jaw tensed as the vacuum engaged, and the glass vial quickly began to fill with that dense, iridescent garnet fluid, the uncorrupted, optimized blood of an anomaly.
She pulled the needle out of his arm, pressed a small adhesive square over the puncture, and turned away to place the glass vial into the refrigeration rack. Zaeryn watched her hands move against the metal tabs of the storage unit. The uncorrupted garnet fluid caught the light before she shut the hatch.
Daphne finished her notes on the terminal and turned back to face him. She walked over to his chair, her boots clicking once against the floor as she moved into the space he was sitting.
The data is logging," she whispered, her voice dropping to a sultry, provocative murmur as her hands slid deliberately up his thighs. "Which means... My schedule will be officially clear soon. We should do something," she suggested.
"Sure." Zaeryn agreed. "How soon is ’soon’?" he asked.
"Thirty minutes," she said. "I have a few reports to file first."
Zaeryn let his hands rest on her waist for a brief moment, then released her. "I am going to find Mireille," he said. "The High Commander has given me clearance to the deep training chambers."
Daphne nodded, her hands sliding off his legs. "Go ahead. I will find you down there when I finish."
★★★
Zaeryn left the laboratory wing and took the lift down to the Vanguard transit depot. The sector was where the active patrol agents gathered before deployment, a wide open room broken up by terminal stations and equipment racks, with a handful of agents on duty when he walked in.
Some were at the consoles. Some stood in small clusters talking. None of them paid particular attention to him until they were close enough to see who he was.
He found Mireille at the back of the room, standing at one of the side terminals, in conversation with another agent.
The other agent was a little taller than Mireille, brown hair tied back at her neck, in the same dark uniform. She was the one speaking when Zaeryn came into earshot, and whatever she had just said had her smiling faintly at her own remark.
Then her eyes lifted past Mireille’s shoulder and settled on him.
The smile shifted, became something a little more amused.
"I forgot," the agent said. "You are friendly with the anomaly."
Mireille did not bother to respond. She just turned her head, found Zaeryn, and waited for him to speak.
Zaeryn nodded to the other agent. "Hello." Then he looked back at Mireille. "Are you ready to spar?"
"Not yet." She responded, her eyes narrowed on him, "You’re too eager, Zaeryn"
"Of course I am. Eager to shock you, by winning the spar,"
The agent next to Mireille let out a short laugh, the kind that came out before she had decided whether she wanted to laugh or not.
"Hm." She looked Zaeryn up and down with a clinical sort of interest. "I like him already. He has guts. But that is a bad idea. Mireille is not your typical agent. She is a powerhouse, so you do not stand a chance."
"Probably not," Zaeryn said. "But I am not your typical person, either. So I might surprise you."
"Really?" The agent met his gaze and shook her head. "I would like to watch this spar."
Mireille shook her head.
"Not now," she said. "The High Commander wants something done. The spar will have to wait."
Zaeryn felt a tinge of disappointment. "Wait until when?" he asked. He was still looking forward to this.
"For an hour or two. We still have time." Mireille said.
"No!" Cyra said, her voice louder than normal. She shifted her weight onto her other foot and pressed her arm on Mireille’s shoulder. "The task can wait,"
she said. "It is not going anywhere. I would rather see him fight you first."
She turned her attention back to Zaeryn, and there was a wry edge in her expression that sharpened into something more deliberate, more interested in what she was looking at.
"Arya talked about you," she said. "She does not talk about many people. And she said you have potential to be a legendary warlady. I don’t believe that obviously, because you’re... a male. But you’re still an anomaly, and it’s a known fact that you can use Vitae. So I want to see it, now."
Zaeryn thought of it."Sure, I can show you a little something."
"That can wait too," Mireille said before Zaeryn could do it, "We’re moving now."
The way she said it left no opening. Cyra looked at her as if to push the point a second time. In the end she just exhaled, "Alright fine. But you two are going to spar and I’m going to watch it."
Mireille nodded.
"All right. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll be around." Zaeryn said. He took half a step back, and then, almost as an afterthought, he added the rest of it. "I was going to find Annalise anyway."
Cyra’s expression caught on the name for a half-second before the rest of the sentence caught up to it.
"Annalise," she repeated. "You mean Lady Ilderweid."
Zaeryn stopped. Ilderweid? Who was that? "Who?" he asked
"Lady Ilderweid. The councilor, Annalise Ilderweid?" Cyra clarified, looking slightly confused with him for whatever reason.
"Oh, that’s her last name? Yes, her." Zaeryn said. "I didn’t know her last name." He clarified.
Cyra looked at Mireille expecting Mireille to be just as surprised as her but she wasn’t.
"Well." She folded her arms across her chest. "First name basis with Councilor Ilderweid. That is something. I have served in this Citadel for years and the woman still calls me Agent Cyra on the days she remembers to call me anything at all."
She tilted her head, studying him with a renewed interest.
"How did you manage that, exactly?"
"I...." Zaeryn didn’t know. How did he manage that exactly? He hadn’t, maybe because Annalise was always Annalise to him. He couldn’t quite remember their introduction, but if she introduced herself to him, then it was by her first name. "She and I have had a few conversations," Zaeryn said. "She’s been kind."
"She is kind to a great many people," Cyra said. "She does not invite all of them to call her by name. The ones who do are usually other councilors."
She let the observation sit there for a moment, then shook her head with something that was halfway to a grin.
"So who else, then. While we are on the subject. Half the council? Or only the ones with a soft spot for an anomaly?"
Before Zaeryn had the chance to answer her, Mireille stopped him. "We’re moving now," she said.
Cyra exhaled through her nose and gave Zaeryn a last look that made it plain the question had not actually been dropped, only postponed.
Then she fell into step beside Mireille, and the two of them moved off toward the corridor that led deeper into the Vanguard wing without another word to him.
Zaeryn watched them go for a moment longer than he needed to, and then he turned and walked out the way he had come in.
