A cough wracked Nadihae's body so hard, he nearly tripped over his own shoe.
What was with this horrible conspiracy theory?
"In the train..." Mitra continued, an unsettlingly hot intensity in his eyes. "The Vessel was already fully-formed when it jumped into the cab. So that couldn't have been its place of origin—which means, it chose the place of attack. It waited to enter the train-cab—"
"That's ridiculous!" Nadihae breathed out, trying to keep his voice level. "Maybe the origin was somewhere nearby. In the tracks or something."
"The alert-devices should have picked up on it then."
They hadn't. Nadihae gulps, bulldozing through that argument with a louder voice. "And in any case, we know Vessels don't discriminate between targets! They eat anything that's human, with blood and flesh... why would they choose to specifically go after the driver and the guard?"
"Exactly," Mitra said. But the approval in his voice only sent a shiver up Nadihae's spine. "That's what a Vessel usually does. It's driven purely by hunger for human flesh. So when I came to the site, I expected the Vessel in the cab to have attacked a passenger next. Or anyone closest to the cab, maybe.
But it came out of the cab instead. And it tried going after one of the ambulance attendants outside. Like it was planning to derail the rescue efforts—"
"Alright, that's stretching it a bit too far!" Nadihae chuckled.
He waved a hand in front of his face like he was dismissing the notion, but hidden behind his own fingers, was an expression of raw panic.
He knew exactly what Mitra was suggesting. The implications of his observations couldn't have been clearer: they could, as a society, be dealing with a new level of threat. An advanced threat that none of them had yet built the systems to understand or respond to.
Unprepared and incompetent was the last thing Nadihae wanted to feel as he prepared to face the questioning of his life.
It was best to play this off as a one-time thing. A freak accident.
It had to be.
"Give it a few more days, and we'll see if anything like this happens again," Nadihae advised. They came to a standstill in front of the car. "Let's not jump to any conclusions that'll scare the public."
Mitra froze, mouth popping open in an expression of belated realization.
"... You're right, Officer," he cleared his throat. An almost embarrassed smile grazed his lips, and he bowed his head apologetically.
"I'll wait for your guidance."
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆
"Why is Mitra standing with Nadihae back there!?"
An enraged voice echoed through the dingy garage.
On one end of the garage was a television—tuned into the news channel, showing live footage from outside a hospital.
At the centre of this gathering was a woman in a white salwar with golden borders—the standard colors of provincial representatives from the Democratic People's Party of Kantoor (DPPK)—wearing an air of pure approachability.
Even when a horde of mics kept getting pushed towards his face, she did not for a second show any irritation or discomfort. In fact, she kept nodding, welcoming more questions from the reporters.
"Jantia Ma'am, our sources say that none of the Guardian Command Force's alert-devices on the platform made a sound when the train left. Does that mean the Vessel's presence was missed by our technology!?"
"Right—shouldn't the DPPK government have better safeguards to prevent Vessel attacks in public spaces like this? The rate of casualties is obviously higher—"
"I agree!" Jantia responded to the swarming journalists. "And that's exactly what we did. Because the government has been anticipating this, a secret circular was passed to the Guardian Command Force and all adjacent agencies."
A chorus of whispers rose among the reporters. "What did it say!" one of them shouted at the back, as the mics drove towards him with renewed vigour. It took a few policemen stepping in to hold back the crowd from enveloping Jantia entirely.
"It was an order from the Chief Minister to post the best Guardians for patrol only around high-risk, population-dense public areas. That's why..." Jantia paused talking, then looked over her shoulder with an arm stretched out.
Whoever she'd been beckoning to step forward—stepped forward.
And that person brought with him a sudden roar of cheers. A significantly noticeable change in the general mood of the crowd and how they regarded the representatives of the administration in front of them—from impatience and suspicion to a wildly approving encouragement.
"That's right," Jantia smiled, riding on the shift in emotion. She had to lift her arm a little higher due to his height, but she managed to put it around Mitra's shoulder.
"Because of the DPPK's foresight, we were able to immediately gather the best of our best Guardians at Juren Station—and they eliminated the Vessel in a record time of twenty-five seconds. Prevented it from causing any more damage! So, you see—"
She didn't get to finish her sentence before a round of deafening applause and whistles drowned out her voice. Every person in that crowd chanted Mitra's name.
With a sincere smile, he raised his hand in a small wave—making sure to sweep his eyes across the crowd. Jhanti struggled even more to interject after that, because the voices had somehow grown louder and louder.
The last words of her statement could barely be heard. "Of course, there's room to improve our preventive efforts to ensure something at this scale never happens again. But with the cooperation of Guardians like our Mitra..."
The television gets muted.
A tense, seething silence descends upon the garage.
It is organized like a makeshift office space—a big table in the middle of the room, chairs arranged around them. On the walls, fixed at various places are whiteboards and clusters of sticky-notes. Today, not all the chairs are filled. Only four people occupy the garage, and that thick silence is interrupted by one of them.
A young woman with a black scarf around her neck.
"Mitra, that ass-licking fucker—he's there just so they can use him to save their reputation!" she spits out, slapping her hand against the table. "They're shifting attention to that stupid Golden Boy Saviour image he has. They're using him as a cover!" Her agitation inches slowly into desperation, voice cracking with tears. "Then w-what was the point of causing this accident!?"
"You still did well, Tiso," the boy in a beige cardigan next to her speaks softly. "It made it to the news—"
"All for what!" she thundered, making him flinch away. "Just so the DPPK can get good publicity?"
The rest of them stood up, alarmed by her behavior. She was prone to having fits, but never had they seen so much aggression directed towards one of their own.
"How dare you try to comfort me with those stupid words?
I didn't do well!
No!
I didn't even do shi—ah, ah ah!"
The boy who had been on the receiving end of her wrath, cornered against a wall, suddenly found all the tension draining away from his body.
He breathed out a loud sigh of relief seeing the man who'd appeared behind Tiso, comforted to the point of giggling softly. There was not the slightest hint of nervousness on his face as Tiso got dragged away from him—by that man's pale hand wrapped around the end of her hoodie.
─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆
Reikirat Ranjira was borderline anaemic. A condition that made his already-pale complexion even lighter and quite intolerant towards the forces of nature. That was why, coming back from an errand he had to run outside, he was dressed in a pastel grey linen shirt and white cotton pants—ticking off both breathable fabrics and colors that wouldn't wash him out.
Removing the cap on his head, he let his long silky hair fall in waves over his dark eyes—and using the other hand gripping Tiso's hoodie, he spun her around till she was facing him.
His voice was muffled behind the black mask covering his mouth and neck.
"Did you seriously just say you didn't do shit?"
Something about his presence, so close to her that she could smell the smoke on his collar, made Tiso finally break down.
"The news isn't tearing them apart for the accident," she sobbed. "It didn't have the effect we—"
He flicked her forehead. Hard.
"As if the news is the only discourse-framing machine in our society," he clicked his tongue, ignoring Tiso's louder wails. "People on social media are poking holes in what Jantia said. That circular was a shit-white lie, obviously. It's not mainstream yet, but the Guardian Command Force is getting fucked for not responding well. Our test worked, so we can do something bigger next time. And that's all—
Take your head out of your ass and look at me."
The firmness in his voice snapped Tiso out of her despair. She blinked through her tears, raising her head and forcing herself to meet his gaze.
"That's all because of you."
Reikirat let go of her hoodie, stepping back to lean against the edge of the table.
Tiso swiped a hand harshly over her cheek, but no matter how much she tried stopping them—the tears only welled up more and more.
When she finally was able to speak, she choked out to the boy in the cardigan. "Sorry, Mashul."
"It's just that... we plan so hard to get each thing right. We put our all into it, we wait and wait for the right time, and when we finally make it happen, a stupid Guardian shows up! Just by taking out one stupid Vessel, they make the world forget what happened, right? One minute of their action wipes out fifty hours of our actions! And it made me so a-angry..."
Waiting until Tiso felt like she'd spilled it all out, Reikirat straightened up. "About that," he addressed the four. "I heard we don't have to deal with inferior Vessels for much longer."
Mashul slapped a hand over his mouth. "Does that mean..." he shared a glance with the others, whose expressions were just as bewildered as his own. "There's a human? An actual human that can carry and use demonic energy?"
Reikirat nodded. "Starting tomorrow, we will have a workstream to find him and learn about him. He'll be part of our plan as soon as we have enough intel."
The room that had quietened down with Reikirat's deep, firm voice, suddenly erupted with more noise than before.
Tiso grabbed one person with each of her arms, then twirled them around with a euphoric laugh. Mashul got pulled into the group soon enough, and the four danced and jumped around the garage uninhibitedly—oblivious to the fond glint swimming in Reikirat's eyes.
"Down with the Guardians!"
"I can't believe we're going to have a superior Vessel destroying Mitra."
"Not just Mitra, stop being obsessed with him! This human Vessel could destroy every lineage of Guardians at once."
"Imagine the things we could achieve with him!"
"I can't wait to find this guy. He's our literal demon on earth."
───⋆⋅☆⋅⋆───