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Geralt unwinds the cloth wraps from his wrists. His hands itch for steel, but apparently swords aren’t the done thing anymore.
And yet, they’ve given him a blue shield with the old lilies on it, a ridiculously awful outfit, and a moniker that includes the name of a country that doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed for over a century.
(Technically, he hasn’t existed for well over a century, either—more than one, in fact. Artifact compression is his new least favorite kind of magic.)
It hurts his head to think about it any of it.
The enormous man standing in front of him as he winds down from his training session is more of an annoyance than anything.
“You trying to get me back into the world?” he asks flatly.
“I don’t give a fuck about your relationship to this ploughing world.” Dijkstra is more intimidating with one eye and a patch than other men are with two. “But I like that the world exists, and if getting your apathetic arse some appropriate motivation helps in keeping it from going tits up, then I am here to serve. Captain.”
Before Geralt can even bother saying don’t call me that, Dijkstra tosses a dossier on the bench in front of him.
“He’s called Eredin, he’s from another realm. He’s got some kind of a chip on his shoulder, said something about being… 'burdened with glorious purpose.' You probably know the type.”
Geralt skims the information on first page briefly before flipping through a few more. Beyond the lean, hardened face of the elf from a different dimension, there are profiles and images of others: humans, both men and women, another elf—apparently the Aen Elle are divided in their aims—and even a dragon.
"Who the hell are they? This guy’s friends?”
Dijkstra doesn’t answer, and when Geralt looks back up, the smirk on his face has made his remaining beady little eye twice as beady.
“No, Captain,” he says, relishing every syllable. “They’re yours.”
The helicopter—that’s what he thinks it’s called—descends to the surface of the unbelievably enormous sea vessel below.
He observes the seemingly countless uniformed SWORD agents below darting to and fro, some carrying equipment, climbing into or out of sleek flying machines, and others with clipboards, making haste to join others descending to the ship’s lower decks.
Standing what seems—to Geralt, at least—dangerously close the painted landing strip they’re approaching is an older man in a fitted black suit. His coat and hair are whipped up in the wind, but he doesn’t move a muscle. He simply stands there, hands fastened behind his back, squinting up at the copter with a smile like the door to a locked vault, confident in its security.
Geralt hops down onto the deck, and the man is before him in two quick, smooth steps, hand extended.
“Master witcher. A pleasure. Agent Terzieff-Godefroy, entirely at your service.”
Geralt shakes his hand, surprised at the man’s strength, given how slim he is.
“Don’t bother with that ‘master’ business,” Geralt tells him brusquely. “And don’t say ‘Captain,’ either—never was one. ‘Geralt’ is fine with me.”
“Very well,” the agent agrees. “In that case, ‘Regis’ will do nicely.”
“Nice to meet you, Regis.” Geralt gestures at the carrier. He’s always been shit at small talk, but at least people tend to take pity on him being so unanchored in time. He finds if he just compliments the technology, everyone seems to go with it. “Quite the leviathan you’ve got here.”
“It’s an extraordinary piece of materiel, without doubt,” Regis nods once, “but not nearly as exciting as you are. Your decompression caused quite the stir in our little organization.” He grins even wider. “Has Agent Roche asked you to sign his trading cards yet?”
“His what?” Geralt shakes his head. This persona they’ve given him is a farce. At least he’s been allowed to wear civvies for the time being. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Regis looks back, and Geralt follows his glance; a woman in a sunflower gold blouse and green trousers is walking over to them, hands fixed firmly in her pockets. Her blonde hair is pulled into a long, messy braid that trails down her back, and her oversized tortoiseshell frame glasses make her face look smaller than it is.
“Ah, Dr. Saesenthessis!” Regis greets. “Allow me to introduce—”
“—I know who he is, Regis, thanks.” She smiles hesitantly at Geralt, giving him a little wave. “I’m Saskia.”
“Geralt.” He does a quick mental turn, recalling the profiles Dijkstra showed him, trying to place her.
It takes him a minute, because this wasn’t the form of hers he’d focused on. “You’re the dragon, right?”
She coughs, and adjusts her glasses on her nose. “Ha, not, ah… presently.”
Geralt puts his hands up. “Not judging. I don’t have anything against dragons.”
Saskia shoves her hands back in her pockets and focuses on the deck. “I don’t usually use the ‘D’ word. There was an… incident, and I kind of... broke Loc Muinne.”
“Dr. Saesenthessis is consulting with us on a scientific matter,” Regis clarifies. “We’ll be leaving shortly, so you’ll want to head below deck. At least, Geralt will. Doctor?”
“I’ll leave the flying to you,” she assures him.
Geralt glances back and forth between them, struggling to comprehend.
“This is… a flying ship?”
“The first of its kind, but not the last, I’m sure. This way.”
Just as the agent turns to lead them inside, Geralt’s eye catches on the one pop of color adorning Regis’s entire outfit: a tiny symbol embroidered in bright red thread, less than a quarter of inch in height, on the reverse of his lapel. It’s made of up two triangles, one stacked on top of the other, points touching.
“What’s that on your jacket? An hourglass?”
“Hmm?” Regis touches the fabric flaps, smoothing them down after their encounter with the copter. “Oh, how observant of you. Yes, it is. Although that description lacks context. It’s the marking found on Latrodectus hesperus, more commonly known as the western black widow spider. The marking’s become something of a… oh, I don’t know… personal emblem of mine.”
They reach the lab first. Regis waves his security card in front of the door, and it opens with a ‘beep’.
“Doctor,” Regis gestures through the doorway. Saskia seems all too happy to lose herself in the minutae of whatever project SWORD has brought her in for, and Geralt follows Regis as he ushers them past the lab.
Just as they’re about to pass the last reinforced glass panel surrounding it, he catches sight of the sunstone, the artifact they managed to take back from Eredin, displayed on one of the lab tables. Something about it gives him pause. He suspects if he still had his old wolf’s head medallion, it would be shaking just now.
“Marvelous creatures, spiders,” Regis continues, drawing Geralt’s attention again, leading them through a corridor brimming with armed personnel. “Industrious and extraordinarily helpful, all for want of a little blood.”
Geralt half-frowns. “Not such a small ask if you’re a fly.”
They reach a hub where several hallways intersect, and Regis stops abruptly.
He gives Geralt yet another smile at he turns, this one perhaps a little more sly, but Geralt can’t exactly figure out why.
“Yes, quite right,” Regis nods, as if he and Geralt are sharing a secret. Geralt’s pretty sure he’s missing something. He starts to ask about it, when another figure steps in, halting the conversation.
She’s short, with close cropped straw-colored hair, wearing a regulation navy blue SWORD jumpsuit and gun belt—although he’s pretty sure she’s got the front zipper pulled down to a distinctly non-regulation low level. Geralt tries not to stare.
“Geralt,” Regis continues the introductions, “This is Agent Ves. She’ll take you to meet the rest of the team. I have some business to attend to, but I do hope we’ll meet again sooner rather than later.”
Geralt nods at him as he excuses himself, and somehow seems to vanish among the other agents in the hallway before Geralt fully comprehends where he's gone. The former witcher shakes his head, still not sure what to make of the man, and turns back to Ves.
“Who’d you meet already?” she asks him, apparently all business, despite the impression her uniform seems to give off.
“The dr—I mean, Doctor… uh… Saskia,” Geralt fumbles.
She smiles. “Well, hang on. Fun’s just getting started.”
The elf—the Aen Elle, to be specific—is seated at the conference table, staring out the starboard side window, the unending sky reflecting a cool blue cast on his gaunt face, making him look that much more otherworldly.
Geralt almost doesn’t want to interrupt—he’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to an alien, anyway. “Avallac’h, right?”
“The witcher,” Avallac’h acknowledges, gaze still fixed on the clouds.
After several seconds of awkward silence, Geralt looks back to Ves for guidance. She gives him a shrug, as if to say, I just work here.
“So,” he says bluntly, “what’s this asshole Eredin’s story?”
That gets a reaction: the elf’s plaits bounce on his shoulders as he turns, scowling.
“Have a care how you speak; he still one of the members of the royal court of—”
It’s Ves who cuts in this time , voice crisp with irritation. “He massacred an entire coastal town in the past twenty four hours.”
“...We’re not close,” Avallac’h finishes sheepishly.
This is going to be interesting.
The woman in black kevlar barely looks up at him when he stands in the doorway of her cramped quarters.
"You shoot arrows,” he says, more a statement than a question. Her dishwater blonde hair is chin length, and looks like it was cut by someone wearing a blindfold. She sits at a small desk, applying fletchings to empty carbon fiber shafts.
“Yes,” she tells him flatly.
He waits for her continue.
“Really, really well,” she says at last.
"No… superpowers or anything?” Given who they’re going up against, it seems best to check.
She sets the fletchings down and scowls at him.
"I have this amazing ability not to put up with anyone’s shit."
Okay, he thinks. This Milva’s all right.
“Ah, Captain Temeria.”
Geralt clenches a fist—half at the cheesy nickname, and half at the man saying it—but says nothing in response. It should really be a crime to turn someone into a patriotic legend after they’re presumed dead.
Partially obscured by layers and layers of floating holo-displays, Emhyr var Emreis smiles an awful smile in his direction, his expression luminous with mock cheerfulness.
CEO of Emreis Industries, Geralt recalls from the profile. Brilliant roboticist and industrial titan. After an outside party forced a hostile takeover of his father’s company when he was fourteen, he fought tooth and nail to regain control of the corporation, maneuvering himself into a leadership role by the age of twenty-one.
Geralt had occasional dealings with Dragus var Emries back in his day; if the rest of the report is to believed, Emhyr is just as much of a warmongering son of a bitch as his great great great grandfather, so Geralt doesn’t really feel a need to return the grin.
One thing had been curious, though: huge portions of the file had been redacted. Some digging for details about Emhyr’s childhood on the internet (damn helpful invention, that) turned up rumors about some kind of a curse and a kidnapping, leading to an ongoing medical condition.
Emhyr looks about as fit as a man his age should to Geralt’s eyes, though. If he was harmed in some irrevocable way, it’s not easy to spot at first glance.
“Emries,” Geralt answers tightly, only showing the barest hint of recognition to his—godsdammit—teammate. He’s kind of glad Ves left him alone on this last stop of the tour; he feels like this encounter could go south in a dangerously short amount of time, and he’d prefer if no one else was here to see it.
Emhyr makes a fluid gesture in the air, the hovering rectangles of light before him parting slightly, giving Geralt a clearer view of his imperious bearing.
His eyes flick up and down over Geralt’s person once.
“You look well for someone who, until a month ago, was little more than a priceless vintage curio. Been working out, have you?” he asks idly.
Geralt feels a growl rising in his throat. “Not sure what that has to do with—”
"I confess I’m disappointed not to see that jaunty outfit you normally wear,” Emhyr continues, mockery still reverberant in his bass-heavy voice. “How delightfully… ‘retro' of you.”
Suddenly he leans forward, sloughing off the chipper demeanor in an instant, engaging Geralt in earnest, and it’s like the room goes brighter and colder all at once.
Emhyr’s eyes, which Geralt had passingly noted as being beige, flare gold. But before he can observe them further, the witcher finds his attention drawn to the man’s chest, where a sliver of light escapes from between the buttons of his shirt. The faint glow is chilly and inorganic, and Geralt can’t help but note that it emanates from the place where the medallion of his ancestor’s chain of office would have rested.
Except it doesn’t seem to shift as Emhyr moves at all—like it’s a part of him. Is that related to the injury that SWORD was trying to cover up?
Just over Emhyr’s shoulder, there’s a corresponding shimmer; Geralt’s eye is drawn to the light as it pulses in brightness, and it takes him a moment to realize what he’s looking at: the Iron Sun.
The Sun is a futuristic flying armor invented and worn by Emreis; Geralt didn’t even know what robotics or electronics were when he was decompressed, but he knows armor, and as much as he hates to admit it, the Sun is a gorgeous piece of work.
He can’t begin to imagine how it works, but the craftsmanship of the metal plating alone is deeply impressive: each elegantly curved black and gold piece sets into another with astonishing precision. No part of Emhyr’s body is exposed while wearing it, and the little… light beam weapons set into the machine’s palms are both sleek and powerful. Their effect is not dissimilar to a witcher’s use of Signs, and Geralt wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if that had been Emhyr’s inspiration while designing it.
The glow emits from the middle of the armor’s chest—in fact, it’s the same spot the light is coming from on Emhyr’s chest—
It’s as if he’s spotted the frame pieces to an unfinished puzzle, clues to a mystery he didn’t know he was supposed to be solving, but he’s not allowed to ponder it for long, his line of thought severed cleanly by the industrialist’s words.
“Tell me,” Emhyr starts, and it feels more like a command than an introductory statement. “How is it that a witcher came to hold the rank of captain? Weren't your caste supposed to be politically neutral?”
The sensation of being simultaneously impressed and pissed off burns in Geralt again; he’s starting to get the distinct impression that that’s going to be a common occurence if he has to work with this man.
“Since when are you an expert on witchers?” he snarls.
Emhyr flicks his hand hypnotically once again, like he’s casting a spell, and the holo-displays explode with information, text, images, and moving pictures bursting forth.
It’s… Geralt’s life. Or at least pieces of it, things related to it. Documents about witchers, stories and songs that were written about him, a schematic of the old training grounds at Kaer Morhen, recipes for witcher decoctions, and much more.
All the things that his life used to be, centuries ago. All the things he doesn’t have, can never have again.
“Since last night,” Emhyr says flatly.
Geralt bites down so hard on the inside of his cheek he’s sure he’s going to taste blood in a moment.
“I can only assume you’ve not been assigned to this position as a monster slayer, given that our so-called team includes two of them in its ranks,” Emhyr continues, his expression slipping into one of absolute disdain. “So what then, exactly, is your area of expertise?”
The feeling of being so thoroughly researched, of being actually understood by the one person he dislikes most in this god awful century, only to have it thrown in his face, used to make him feel lesser than, is so thoroughly infuriating that he knows he has to leave before he takes advantage of the fact that Emhyr is completely without armor for the moment.
“You know what?” Geralt asks through bared teeth. “I have no ploughing idea.”
He’s already out the door and halfway down the hall before he catches the throw away detail in Emhyr’s words.
...Two of them?
The door to the small conference room is open when Geralt walks up to it, but he knocks on it anyway as a courtesy.
“Hey. We should talk.”
Regis looks up from his mobile phone, raising his eyebrows in recognition as he sets it on the table.
“Geralt! Excellent to see you again.” He gestures to an empty seat. “Please.”
He rolls his own chair a few inches back from the lip of the table and crosses his legs, twisting his entire posture in Geralt’s direction.
“How did you discern my nature?” he asks with no hint of surprise, as if there is no other topic Geralt could have possibly come to discuss.
Geralt chuckles, exasperated. This is the strangest team he’s ever been on. Not that he’s been on many. Maybe they’re all this frustrating.
“Got Saskia to redirect some heat scanners in your vicinity, and checked the readouts in the lab,” he admits. “You run a completely different body temperature than everyone else on this boat.”
Regis nods approvingly. “Very astute.”
“What you are...” Geralt trails off. “It’s not in your file. Does anyone else know?”
The vampire shrugs. “Those with the required security clearance.”
So that means Dijkstra, and probably Ves and Roche. But that list definitely doesn’t include contractors. “How’d Emhyr find out?”
“Like you, he’s extraordinarily observant. And I may have tipped my hand here and there.”
“Why him?”
Regis folds his hands neatly in his lap and glances up, composing a response.
“Emhyr thinks he knows everything; it’s not so very far from the truth. More importantly, though, it’s helpful if he feels that he does. He’s less likely to nose in one’s secrets if he believes there are none left to be discovered.”
“What other secrets do you have?” Geralt asks seriously. It’s not like he’s afraid, or has any reason to think Regis untrustworthy, not if SWORD has deemed him fit for service. But this is much more than he signed up for. (Come to think of it, he didn’t really sign up for any of this, did he?)
Regis beams at him, and Geralt finds himself wondering how it is he didn’t notice those teeth before. “Might I reacquaint you with the definition of the word ‘secret’?”
The smile Geralt returns to him has a hint of a warning in it. “I know they don’t make friends.”
“That is true enough,” the agent nods, “and partly why I revealed myself to you.”
“So how’d you wind up in this line of work?” Geralt asks, genuinely curious.
Joy drains from Regis’s face, as though his good mood has been pierced by something as sharp as his own canines. His gaze drifts to the gunmetal grey floor. “As you might imagine, I have a few… shall we say... unique skill sets. In my past life, I had no compunction about how I used them, either for myself in the employ of others. And as such, I incurred the wrath of a number of powerful individuals, including SWORD. They gave me an opportunity to atone for my misdeeds, and I took it.”
When he looks back up at Geralt, there’s a palpable regret in his eyes.
“Put more concisely: I have red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.”
“How’s that going for you?” Geralt is, again, completely sincere. He’s never known a vampire to have a change of heart, let alone one they chose to carry out via a government organization.
“Very slowly,” Regis concedes. “Fortunately, time is one thing I have an abundance of. Oh,” he exclaims suddenly, as if remembering something. “Speaking of which, I have something for you. Which may serve as another explanation for why I have decided to engage you as a confidant.”
Slipping a hand in his jacket pocket, he pulls out a small pewter object. When he uncurls his fingers, Geralt can hardly believe his eyes.
The frozen snarl of the metallic wolf’s head attached to a silver chain is just as he remembered it.
“It’s almost certainly not yours, specifically,” Regis explains, “But it is very much authentic.”
It doesn’t actually shake when Regis hands it to him—and that’s interesting on its own, he notes passively, some unused part of his witcher’s brain waking up from a deep sleep—but it might as well have. Geralt remembers the feeling, oh, quite well.
He raises the chain before him, about to slip it over his head immediately, instinctively, then pauses; perhaps Regis had only meant to show it to him, or had only given it to him as a momento, not meaning for Geralt to actually wear it.
But when he glances back, the vampire is checking his phone, perhaps legitimately having received a message; somehow Geralt thinks it might just be a ruse, an excuse to give Geralt a small measure of privacy. He’s not unappreciative of the gesture, and slips the chain over his head.
The metal is cool against his skin, and he has to stifle a sigh at the familiarity of it. It’s the first thing in this era that’s felt right.
“You see, you are not the only who feels… shall we say… displaced in these unusual times,” Regis tells him softly.
And it hits him that out of all the people in this organization, in this time period, in the world… Regis might actually understand what he’s been through.
It’s been helpful to push it down, ignore it: the pervasive emptiness he feels every time he remembers that everyone he knew and loved is dead and gone, existing now as no more than a footnote in some dusty tome. He leans on the stories about witchers having no emotions, sets his face into a grim mask, and tries to move on—to what, he’s not sure.
He thought he had nothing in his life before. Now it’s true beyond the shadow of a doubt. And no one can no what that’s like.
Except maybe a vampire living among humans, who has had to watch them ravaged by the claws of time, again and again.
“Hey—” Geralt starts, voice rough with emotion, when another figure darkens the doorway.
Both he and Regis turn to see a man in a suit with a blue tie; his SWORD credentials identify him as Agent Roche.
Oh, boy.
“Captain,” he addresses Geralt with a respectful nod. “I just wanted to say that… I’m quite an admirer of yours, and the country’s, and I was there when you were small and brittle—I mean,” his eyes go wide as he rambles, “I held you in my hand—”
Geralt gives Roche a look. He can practically feel Regis trying not to laugh.
“—while you were still a statue and it’s just, it’s a real honor, sir,” Roche finishes somewhat more timidly than he’d begun. “And Dijkstra needs both you and Agent Godefroy in the main assembly; Dr. Saesenthessis has found something.”
Geralt smiles at Regis. “Time to go be heroes, I guess.”
Regis returns the grin. “After you.”