Chapter Text
Ellen had never been to a release party before. She'd attended similar functions as a servant in her teens, of course, but being a "guest" was new to her.
Not that she really was a guest. Staffing Astra's new label entirely with combat-ready employees instead of hiring a dedicated security team seemed like a bit of a stretch to Ellen, but they did live in New Eridu, she supposed; the Hollows were so omnipresent you could find hardened veterens in the oddest places. Evelyn really managed to dig up enough candidates to keep the lights on while making sure they were some of the best defended lights in the city.
The downside? This conversation.
"... of course, the pre-Hollow global economic trade network provided all the necessary materials for industrialized civilization, shifting resources from across the world to specialized factories located in less prosperous urban centers, but between second-wave oceanic Hollows disrupting those trade networks and the resulting destabilization, both economic and political, of international society, the planet's multiple and overlapping crises at the time prevented any such transport..."
Many of her coworkers were on formal security detail, manning entrances or watching cameras, but a few posed as attendees to watch the main room and provide immediate support if needed - including Ellen, who, like it or not, was the most photogenic of the bunch, and the least likely to set off the instinctive alarms that alert rich people when poor people get too close.
The most photogenic of them outside management, of course. While, as always, the cameras focused on Astra, Evelyn had more than her fair share to dodge this time; to celebrate them breaking free and starting over, Astra had finally, finally talked Evelyn into doing a track with her - and it turned out Astra was right to. Evelyn had a powerful, soulful singing voice, clearly less experienced than Astra's but perfectly suited to moody rock. Ellen had run into Evelyn's dedicated fanbase while researching the job; she had a few bets with Mana on how rabid they'd get after the album released.
Mana thought Ellen was pretty enough to spawn a fandom of her own. The thought filled her with fear.
"... therefore maintaining the traditional bulk manufacturing capabilities that defined pre-Hollow industrial civilization is no longer necessary in New Eridu, as the constantly-regenerating internal nature of Hollows allows, among other things, the harvest of effectively infinite concrete, rebar, multiple types of wood, tiling, sheet metal, piping, wiring, abandoned tools and electronics, and even plants and canned food (accounting for detecting and purging corruption before use, of course) from an area without influencing the area once the Hollow departs, all for only the cost of labor and protection - despite the fact that such harvesting violates conservation of mass as we understand it, but, though we are moving outside my area of expertise now, I do know the exact nature of Hollows and their interaction with conventional physics is still poorly understood despite years of research..."
The problem with being ordered to watch and mingle is actually having to watch and mingle. Ellen had nothing in common with the sorts of people invited to red-carpet events, but her time in Victoria taught her plenty about handling rich idiots. One of the first things Rina taught her (after she got over her anger enough to listen) was two ways to put their clients at ease: ask them about something they enjoy and ask them about something they're proud of.
Looking for a good cover, Ellen had approached a portly middle-aged man standing strategically near an entrance, pegged him as an academic, and asked him about his field of study. And to his credit, the conversation hadn't started out this way; despite him constanly clearing his throat mid-sentence, he was an engaging speaker, drawing questions out of her and letting them direct the conversation, and it wasn't like the topic wasn't interesting or useful to know about.
But that was fourty-five minutes of rambling and saliva-filled wheezing ago.
"... that isn't to say New Eridu doesn't have manufacturing or resource extraction operations of its own (perish the thought), but such operations focus on producing new or luxury goods or parts for repairs in the manufacturing sector and bulk basics like fresh food or fuel; for example, the majority of our city's petroleum is extracted from an oil field partly submerged by a Hollow, and the infrastructure in the area relies on the crude that pours out of the Hollow without draining it so far that lowering levels disrupt conditions within the Hollow (which would of course be catastrophic), and in fact local culture has evolved around fuel extraction and transportation in ways quite unusual by New Eridu standards..."
Ellen spotted Evelyn subtly intercepting a server heading for Astra and switching her drink for an identical one - one of Evelyn's usual tricks, a quiet way of making sure nothing dangerous ever reached her talent/charge/best friend/girlfriend (Ellen wasn't sure on the specifics). She clearly wasn't expecting it to be necessary, otherwise she wouldn't have immediately taken a sip.
Ellen managed to catch her eye as her boss scanned the room for threats, and seeing the glint of desperation, Evelyn made her way over and unsubtly coughed into her fist right behind the man. He jumped, looked around, and stumbled off as if waking up from a dream.
"Anything to report?" Evelyn asked.
"Nothing over here, boss," Ellen said casually. A minute or two passed awkward silence; her boss took another drink, larger this time, as Ellen dug for a conversation topic.
Then she kicked herself, because somehow she'd forgotten the obvious.
"Excited for your big debut?"
Evelyn cleared her throat again and shot Ellen a resentful look. "You too?"
"Hey, it's a big deal. I hear Astra's been pushing you for ages to record with her."
"She's hard to say no to." Evelyn licked her lips, then finished her drink. "She's been asking for this from me for years, and, I suppose there's no better way to start Lyra. She wants me to have some of the spotlight. I know some of Astra's fans like me, but I'm just hoping this won't put them off."
Having heard the track, Ellen could say with absolute certainty they were about to lose their minds.
Evelyn swallowed. "I can't tell her no. She's too reasonable to really push the line, but she just opens her mouth and I cave."
The conversation went on, and as tended to happen around Evelyn, increasingly revolved around Astra. But the longer it went, the less Evelyn paused to hear Ellen's opinions, and the more rapid and uncontrolled her speech became.
"... which wouldn't be as much of a problem if she kept her security detail tight, but she says she has to be open to fans. And I understand! I should know. I've been," she stuttered, "I've been there, I know what the threats look like to her, I - I was one, it took me getting to know her for my resolve to break and it was already breaking anyway, I was already cracking or I would have killed -"
Evelyn froze at the look on Ellen's face.
"I'm not drunk," she said. "Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong."
Ellen glanced at her boss in the passenger's seat, still dealing with the antidote's side effects, and thanked whatever deity kept Belle's prophecy from coming true this wasn't her mess to clean up.
The plan was, in its subtle, malicious way, almost beautiful. The mastermind used a form of sodium pentothal carefully exposed to certain ethereal contaminants, which causes excessive salivation and a drop in inhibitions as the dose sets in. It worked dramatically well, bypassing the standard twenty minutes most drugs took to enter the bloodstream - except something about the trace ether corruption prevented the body from assimilating too much at once, so no matter how high the dose, it would just make the suggestibility last longer. The substance always passed through the system and did no more damage than making them groggy for the rest of the day, but in the meantime, the victim could spend potentially hours babbling every secret that came to mind and not even notice.
Ellen still wasn't clear on the details, but somebody'd dosed at least some of the drinks and spread them around, probably hoping to catch something incriminating from the wave of accidental confessions. Astra might not even have been the main target; enough celebrities and industry figures showed up a bad actor could make a fortune off anything they managed to record.
However, Astra seemed just fine, like most of the attendees, and no pattern jumped out from the names she knew on the victims list she snuck a look at. Besides, the drug's subtlety made it far, far less dangerous than most poisons they could have slipped into everyone's drinks. She'd put down money the incident wouldn't even make the news.
It was still Evelyn's responsibility to prevent this, and she'd let her guard down so far they managed to get her too. It had to be hitting her hard. But while that might have been enough to send Evelyn into silence, it didn't explain her behavior in the passenger's seat. Ellen could see disappointment in her hunched back, but she also watched her employee out of the corner of her eye with the wariness of an animal observing a possible threat.
After several lights, some contemplation, and a few complicated memories, Ellen quietly pulled into a side lot and put the car into park. Evelyn bristled, but her driver cut her off before anything further happened.
"So. There was a low point in my life where I really thought I'd fucked myself over. It took a couple serious reality checks to put me back on track. I can't make you talk about whatever shit's eating you up right now. I'll drive you to Astra's apartment and never mention this again. But if you need to get something off your chest..."
Evelyn tilted her head just enough to acknowledge her but did nothing more.
"Hey, look, I'll start. So, Phaethon. You know I had a massive crush on both of them at the same time back in high school?"
Evelyn's eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, they were older than me, but they were so cool. Like seriously, who wouldn't? Unbelievably embarrassing when I found out they'd known the whole time."
She caught a quirk in Evelyn's lips out of the corner of her eye.
"But, that's not the big thing."
The quirk smoothed out.
"You probably already picked this up, but... I'm a killer. I learned how to fight keeping myself alive on the streets, and when Victoria picked me up... maybe they could have sheltered me, kept me away from the bad stuff, but I was an angry little kid. I wouldn't have put up with that, and they knew it. So, they trained me, helped me keep that part of myself under control. I've never hurt somebody who wasn't threatening somebody."
Ellen shifted in her seat, the tail indent she'd splurged on giving her just enough room to settle comfortably.
"I never stopped liking fighting. I don't like causing pain for its own sake, I never liked causing permanent harm to a person, but the fighting... the rush, outsmarting enemies and dodging weapons, fear in people's eyes... back when I was still having sleep issues, it's what kept me awake. I try to do good by everybody I care about, but there's always a part of me that wants to hurt people.
"I say this because - well, I don't actually know this, but I'm pretty fucking sure you got a similar background. You hide it pretty well, but the way you move, the way you fight, how you scan a room, the way you panicked when it came up and immediately shut everything down... you went through something similar. You went through something similar and judging by your reaction at the party I don't think you ever actually talked to anybody about it."
She patted the dashboard, just above the ignition.
"I'm not gonna make you talk. I know damn well THAT doesn't ever work out. If you tell me no, I'll drive you back to Astra's place and never say anything again. What I'm saying is, if you wanna bust it out, maybe get some perspective, there's maybe nobody better for that than me. I'll tell you from experience, this shit will keep resurfacing at the worst possible time until you deal with it. I think you got it under control more than I ever did, but trust me, it's just gonna fester."
Ellen looked over, and Evelyn met her eyes, her face unreadable.
"Somebody did this for me and it turned my life around. You mind letting me pay it forward?"