Chapter Text
Willa didn’t think that she would actually do it.
When the assignment had reached her – the next big attack – Willa had stared at the order and quietly sighed to herself.
She’d managed to avoid such assignments since she’d first joined Spree, on the run from the military and forced into the terrorist organization in order to survive. In order to escape an institution that was well and truly unprepared for the threats it would soon be facing.
She’d realized, near the end in Liberia, that it wasn’t Spree they were fighting, but something…someone, much more sinister.
She saw them, on watch. Standing a fair distance, collars around their necks, singing their sadistic and distorted seeds, and she’d realized that Spree couldn’t do that. Spree couldn’t sing with collars: no witch could. Whoever they were…they weren’t Spree. Their storms weren’t…weren’t natural. They were…abominations. Sinister.
And Willa realized…she didn’t know who they actually were. What they actually were. And she realized that no one on deployment with her thought they could be anyone but Spree. But…something in the way they held themselves…they weren’t witches. Not by blood. They couldn’t be Spree, for that reason alone, but…there were still other reasons. Like the way their seeds sounded: like nails on chalkboards, glass shattering, fractured and splintered like vocal cords that had been stripped and forcefully repurposed.
She didn’t understand how no one else heard it. How those songs were too sinister, even for Spree. She had heard Spree’s sounds before: shrieks of the damned, but no matter how foul…they were at least pure. True, rich, witch vocalizations. The songs in Liberia had been distorted. Dark, fractured. They were lies disguised as seeds and they made her ears bleed and made her skin crawl and her spine tingle because they just weren’t right, but no one listened to her.
No one believed her.
Of course they didn’t: Willa realized as soon as the words had left her mouth – frenzied to get the others to understand – that they were a mistake. She sounded crazy, blabbing about how the Spree they were fighting weren’t Spree at all. Begging her counterparts to see if any Spree cells were actually nearby and possibly able or willing to help fight alongside their witch cousins to take down…whatever those sinister beings were. Because Willa knew that they needed reinforcements, and the Army likely wouldn’t give it to them.
No one had listened to her. Especially when she’d begged for Spree intervention. They sat her down in the med wing of their bunker and forced her to rest, thinking she was just suffering exhaustion, suffering from the weight of all of her deployments, suffering from the mental stress of war, to the point of delusion, and those things had gotten to her, but…she knew. Something was wrong. It wasn’t Spree they were fighting, but she didn’t know who or what they were up against, and if no one was willing to listen to her…they were all going to die. They were all going to die and Willa could do nothing to stop it…
And so she left.
As the sinister sounds pressed ever-closer, she tried to think of an escape. A way out. She couldn’t continue to fight an enemy she didn’t truly know; she couldn’t continue to futilely try to convince her counterparts to their impending doom.
And she was not ready to die fighting a faceless, nameless enemy.
So as the battle between military and…whoever they were fighting, reached a crescendo, she made the decision, and she disappeared, some of her own clever Work allowing her the clean escape. Allowing her to sense the Spree cells close by, hidden. Aware.
They knew. They had to. They had to know the true extent of the danger that this new enemy posed. Why else would they not have helped fellow witches in need? Spree supposedly didn’t attack witches, and indeed preached to actively trying to help them, so why else would they not have at least tried to make contact? Why else would they have hidden themselves, around but invisible, undetectable to those who didn’t have true magic flowing in their veins?
Eventually, she found them. Exhausted, she collapsed at Spree’s doorstep and she felt them as they grabbed her, hissing to make sure she wasn’t followed: to make sure they didn’t know she was gone.
They, who? The military? Or the other threat?
They held her as a prisoner for days, interrogating her, and all she could do was insist that she had to leave, something new was out there! Something…sinister, and they knew about it, and she knew and they knew, and they had to do something about it! She had abandoned the military for all that it had done to her and for how no one had believed her, and that had piqued their interest.
Eventually, they chose to believe her. They accepted her. They told her what they knew: that the new threat, was actually an old one.
Camarilla.
They…they were back. Spree had been tracking their growing movement, and their rise was imminent: they were posing as Spree in some countries, and in others, they were carrying out more covert missions to begin to, again, systemically annihilate witchkind, as their forefathers had tried to do.
She asked to join Spree’s cause. Spree’s fight, against all the Camarilla and all that was wrong with the military. And it wasn’t hard to play the part: to slip on the mask that her exhaustion with the military was actual hatred for it. And for civilians. It wasn’t hard to pretend, at first, that her convictions were squarely in line with Spree’s own goals. Indeed: to an extent, she had always agreed with Spree’s ideas: Conscription was slavery by another name.
But it was also duty. And Willa had been raised a proper Southern woman: duty above all else. Duty to country. Duty to family. Duty to herself.
Duty to country had been what compelled her to say the words on her own Conscription day, scared shitless but putting on a brave face, knowing she was doing what was right (or what she thought was right, at the time). But it that same duty to country that saw her following orders that would have gotten her killed, and so duty to country no longer applied.
But duty to family…
Her family.
And to herself…she’d always been true to herself. Even when it made her a social pariah. Even when it made her life hard. Even when it meant living in poverty with her civilian, non-magical husband, and their beautiful, strong daughter.
Duty to herself, and duty to family, were all that she had left…
She would find her way back to them, and in order to do that…she would have to survive. She would have to play a long game, and she would have to play the part of an eager Spree agent, as best she could. Because despite agreeing with a fair few of their points…she loathed their tactics. Extortion. Torture. Killing innocent people…
But, well…that was war. Willa had seen more than enough innocent lives snuffed out in attacks that had no right to be carried out where they had been. Willa had seen how the world of the military and the world of the Spree viewed innocent people as expendable, neither organization free of blood. Neither having any right to point fingers as to who held the ideological upper hand.
The difference was…at least Spree knew about the Camarilla’s return. At least some of their resources went into carefully watching a real and rising threat to witchkind.
And so she’d asked to join, and despite their obvious and dubious misgivings, once they’d put her through a few…trials, to assure her loyalty, she’d been sent to a Spree faction in the Mid-West as a middle-man: not quite considered a “new” recruit, but not a leader, either.
A middle-management type. Not needing to do Spree’s dirty work, but…having to come up with it. As a medic, Spree knew she knew the human body, and all the ways it could be hurt.
She did what she had to do, but she wasn’t proud of it. Spree were violent, and she’d known that, but she’d gotten lucky: her first faction largely dealt more with intimidation tactics than anything else, and Willa made sure to participate where she could or where she was told to: thinking up plans on how they could threaten civilians, plans on how to scare them, plans and plans and plans, all begging her to use her intimate understanding of flesh and bone and nerve endings...
Plans, even ones that made bile rise in her throat, she could at least handle. Plans were nothing more than theories, and while she knew that they were executed…as long as she was coming up with the plans, she could try to pretend that once the ideas left her hands, that was where they ended. Even if she watched the agents under her reading her work with serious expressions, ready to carry it all out to the letter.
Her plans had been…sinister, by nature. She knew they would need to be. Spree had their eyes on her, skeptical despite her having passed their tests. She knew that her middle-man status was a test in and of itself. And it was more important that she ace it, than stick to her morals. It was more important that she ace it, than to think of the face of her husband…sweet, harmless Edwin. And every time she thought of him, she felt sick to her stomach as she looked down at plans she had come up with: plans that involved intimidation, kidnapping, ransoms, the whole sinister lot.
But she couldn’t let on that she wasn’t loyal to Spree. She was certainly more loyal to them than the military, but truly…her only concern was survival. Her own, and that of her family.
She’d been transferred to a different faction after a few weeks of forcing down bile and the guilt that ate at her gut at her first one. Her second one dealt more with the looming Camarilla threat, and that made the work a little easier: she tried to think of every plan as bringing her one step closer to eliminating the Camarilla threat, but the longer she was in Spree, the more she saw: there would be no quiet elimination. Camarilla’s numbers were unknown, but it seemed…they were at least as big as Spree, and, like Spree…they were growing.
Growing in numbers, growing in ruthlessness. Spreading like a plague.
Festering.
It hit Willa that…that there was a storm brewing. A mighty one.
And the storm and fury it brought with it would destroy them all…
Spree, Camarilla, and military…the devastation of a battle between them would be disastrous. Catastrophic. Spree didn’t know what, exactly, Camarilla were using to make their Work…well, work, but it was distorted and broken and…jagged. Wrong. It was so, so wrong.
And military didn’t even fucking know the Camarilla were back. An enemy once thought extinct…rising from the ashes of yesteryear.
It made her shiver to even think of, and the realization that all three organizations were heading to an inevitable and bloody confrontation…it spelled certain death, for thousands, if not more.
It spelled devastation to whole environments, whole cities and quite possibly whole countries wiped off of maps, and her stomach twisted painfully to think…to think of her daughter, sent into that. Sent into certain death in the name of an organization that didn’t even know what it was truly up against. An organization that ground witches up until they had no hope left, like Willa herself. That took everything from them, and then kept taking, and taking. Their daughters. Their sons. Their children. Their siblings and their parents. Their futures.
And if Raelle didn’t die? If she instead was the bringer of that destruction? Her sweet, beautiful Raelle, reduced to a killing machine, reduced to a cog of conquest, reduced to a weapon that could level whole villages. Whole cities, even.
The destruction of a war between Camarilla, with their terrible work, and between Spree, and the military…
It would be Armageddon. An apocalypse if ever there was one.
She heard tell of some factions…some cells of Spree, considering an alliance with the military. With their oppressors. Such factions were laughed at. Mocked. Ridiculed. And, despite herself…Willa couldn’t help but agree with those that sneered at the idea. They would be stronger together…but what would the cost be? Both organizations working together, only for the military to turn on Spree when the war looked like it was won…
No. No one would want that. It was a risk that Spree just were not willing to take. Or at least…some of Spree.
It almost didn’t matter, though. No matter what happened, Willa knew…death would be well at home, sat upon a throne of bodies left in the destructive path of war.
And she couldn’t….she couldn’t let Raelle face that.
Willa didn’t know what she could do. Where they could hide. How they could hide when she had given so much of herself to the military, and then to Spree. It would be hard to entirely disappear from the radar of both organizations. To disappear from it all, into the ether. It would be nigh-impossible to avoid the inevitable war that Spree so vehemently insisted was coming, though it wasn’t the war that they thought it would be, and Willa knew that. It wouldn’t be witches vs. civilians. It would be witches, against witches, against Camarilla. And everyone else would just be caught in the crossfire.
She didn’t want that for herself, nor for Raelle, and certainly not for Edwin, and she didn’t know what the hell she could do, but the first step…the first step was to get her daughter. The first step was to get Raelle out of Fort Salem. Out of the bloody clutches of the military war machine.
She’d set to planning almost as soon as she’d realized the full scale and implications of the return of the Camarilla. As soon as her position in the Spree had been more or less established, she tried to think of ways to get her daughter back, and that was why she worked so hard, despite how much it hurt her very soul, to get to where she was now: a leader.
Of a very small faction, but it was something.
It was something.
The faction had been relatively non-violent, concerned more with espionage than overt intimidation or attacks, and that suited Willa just fine.
But, staring at the order, Willa sighed. Her good fortune…had come to an end.
It was a test. Because it always was. Even after having been in the organization for nearly a year, and having proved herself enough to be designated a leadership position after only a few months in the organization, she still received these tests.
Are you truly with us? was what the order was asking. Are you truly a Spree leader?
Prove it.
At the very least…she didn’t have to do it. She was indeed the leader: she was supposed to assign tasks, not carry them out, unless the orders were specifically for her.
She had a couple members who would do it. And she knew that. And she sighed to herself again, running a hand through her hair and staring at the small slip of paper grasped between her fingers, slipped quietly in with the rest of their mail. It wasn’t addressed. No stamp. Nothing. Just a folded piece of cardstock with a crude little balloon drawing in the bottom right corner.
Faction 201
Report: Middlebury, Vermont.
13:00. Pheasant Ridge. All attendees. Conscription Day.
Willa flipped the page, thinking.
Pheasant Ridge was a mall. Busy one. On Conscription Day, all attendees…everyone in that mall would die.
The thought had Willa’s stomach churning.
She had those couple agents who would do it, but only a couple. And she didn’t want to send them. For one, both of them were already out and about on their own, separate missions. And for another…she didn’t want to send them in because they would do it, and she didn’t want that.
God, she didn’t want that.
She closed her eyes and pressed her palms into her sockets, sighing.
Fuck. She’d managed to go so long without having to do this. Without having to actually carry out a mass attack. The plans she’d been involved with making or creating or delegating had always involved things like kidnapping for ransom or threats, physical and psychological, or for a time, simply compiling data as it was brought to her about Camarilla, but this…
This was something else entirely, and though she herself didn’t have to do it…she didn’t want anyone else to, either.
Shaking her head to herself, Willa straightened, putting the note on her desk.
She’d been working with her new faction, as their leader, for just shy of seven months, and she planted her elbows on her desk, staring down at the note and blinking. Thinking.
She had four recruits out on missions. Theoretically, she could tell her higher-ups that she couldn’t spare any one of her agents in the field, even though, at most…they would be off their missions for two days. Still…she had three of them tailing important people. Two days…they could miss a lot. Hell, even two hours, they could miss a lot…
The other recruits not in the field were all in her safe house, and for them…she could use the excuse that she couldn’t spare them, either: they were a small faction and she could need them for something. For anything, really. Two simply were too new to be sent on a mission like this…too green. They would be a risk to send in and it’d draw questions to Willa: why them? Why someone who was so new that they obviously wouldn’t be able to do it? Why choose them?
No. Sending them would almost be too obvious that she was counting on them to fail.
Though…on the other hand, she could try and claim it was an initiation. Trial by fire. But…for an initiation, it was a lot. By Spree standards…perhaps not. But for Willa…it would be too much. She couldn’t do that. She also couldn’t…couldn’t ask them and then have it turn out that they actually did it. It would be traumatizing, and while the recruits were eager…they were young. Children. Sixteen and seventeen, recruited to Spree through their network with Dodgers.
She refused to use child soldiers, and refused to scar them so deeply on their first mission. She would come up with an excuse for them: say they were not competent enough with the Work to actually properly execute the plan. Argue that their youth made them more likely to back out: to not carry out the mission.
Just…god, anything, to not send them in.
The other two recruits with her at the safe house were…integral, to the house’s operation. Which wasn’t entirely true, but Willa could fudge the details, if she had to. One was her guard. One monitored the mycelium (as best he could: they really did miss their Necro sometimes…). She couldn’t spare either for even a day, in case something happened, as unlikely as it was.
It was flimsy, and if Spree came asking, she knew it wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but she had time to think of other reasons, and so that left her the four operatives who were on their various missions in the field. Three had been assigned before Willa had come in, and the fourth she’d sent out per Spree orders shortly after she’d arrived.
Of all four that she had out, two field agents were busy tailing two officials: one, suspected Camarilla. The other, a local politician who needed some…persuasion, on his stance on witches. The agent that Willa had sent out after she became the faction’s leader was down in Connecticut gathering intel on a suspected Camarilla hotspot. And finally, there was their Necro, biding her time at Fort Salem.
Their Necro…
Willa furrowed her brow. She’d met their Necro when she’d been given weekend leave from Fort Salem and Willa had just arrived as the new faction leader. They had a brief rendezvous at the old lighthouse in Marblehead.
Their Necro had been assigned to Fort Salem when she turned eighteen: forced to take the oath, though she told Willa she had done so willingly, in the name of serving the Spree. It was the biggest mission she’d been given by Spree – or so she said – and she’d planned on doing well: to make Spree proud, and let the military make her stronger, so she’d said the words when the time had come.
Hers was a tragic story, though she didn’t open up much about it when Willa had asked.
That was fine, though. Willa knew the basics. Dodger parents. Killed by the military.
It must have burned her up inside to take the oath.
Despite her dark and painful past, the agent seemed…put-together. Calm. Lively. She didn’t seem to be consumed by pain, her tone neutral as she gave Willa the bare-bones version of her past. Indeed, all things considered, the young recruit almost seemed…normal. Perhaps a bit upset with being at Fort Salem, a hint of disdain in her voice anytime she said it or mentioned something having to do with it, but otherwise…she seemed incredibly well-adjusted.
If anything, she almost seemed…eager, for her cause. Perhaps Spree had given her a new purpose: something to work towards. Willa knew how important that was, in order to survive: to find a reason to keep going.
When not talking about the military, she seemed almost too happy to speak with Willa, though she didn’t say much, per se. Willa couldn’t help but marvel, a little, at the young one’s ability to say so much and yet so little, most of her words platitudes: trying to get on Willa’s good side. Praising Spree for all that she had learned. Praising Spree for being there, for being an alternative to the military. For actually doing something.
It seemed that…their Necro still had rose-colored glasses on, when it came to Spree. It was something that Willa had noticed in a lot of newer recruits: naïveté. An inherent misunderstanding about what Spree was, and what they stood for, and what they did. Willa’d seen so many kids talking about how different Spree was from the military – how Spree fought for witch liberation, and so they, by fighting for Spree, weren’t under some oppressive thumb – but honestly…the two organizations weren’t that different, in Willa’s experience. They both took children and molded them into weapons. Molded them into terrorists and spies and gave them something to fight for, and sent them off into the world to die, and for what? A goal that was a pipe dream, at best. Both organizations expected blind obedience, and they both expected their recruits to fall in line and to kill in droves and to spill blood in the name of their cause, innocent as that blood may be, and in the end, choosing between them was hardly a choice at all, as far as Willa was concerned.
If she had to guess…it was likely that the young Necro had never been commanded to commit acts of violence in the name of Spree, let alone on the grand scale that Spree were becoming known for. And as she hadn’t been made to end tens or hundreds of lives, she still believed that Spree, despite their other, violent cells…was the answer. Was the right organization for her. And, as she had said…she wanted to do right by them.
As the eagerness to prove herself came through her tone in the few words she spoke, Willa realized that their Necro was in over her head, and that realization sent a pang of sadness through Willa. The agent would be in for a rude awakening, when the time came.
Still…everything about her, from the way she held herself to the way she spoke and how she acted around Willa – bravado with a dash of charisma and drive – it gave their Necro an aura of mystery.
She was perfect, actually. Alluring. Willa realized, with small, side-long glances at the young woman, that her daughter wouldn’t be able to resist such an interesting aura. Such intriguing – and she would even dare to say endearing – charm, and that could definitely work for the plan that had started to form in Willa’s mind some time before she’d received her promotion.
The agent’s name was Scylla Ramshorn, and on their second meeting, at the same spot, she seemed to be awaiting a reassignment, clearly thinking her hints had been enough. But Willa had made up her mind: Scylla was perfect, and already situated exactly where Willa needed her, and so it was decided.
“You’ll stay your course at Fort Salem,” Willa had told her, not looking at her, squinting out over the Marblehead harbor.
She saw, from the corner of her eye, Scylla turn to look at her, perhaps incredulous, perhaps surprised.
Willa nodded decisively, not looking back at her. They were sat with plenty of distance between them, two strangers sharing a bench to anyone who saw them. “I have an assignment for you there. When the time comes, you’ll receive the details the same way you usually get orders,” and then, just to pique Scylla’s curiosity, Willa elaborated a little: “A cadet will be joining Fort Salem this coming Conscription Day. She is high-priority. You will bring her to our cause, and when the time is right, you will both be extracted from Fort Salem. Stay the course,” Willa had glanced at her, then, long enough to make brief eye contact. “Do this well, and you will never have to step foot in Fort Salem again. For now: await further instructions.”
Willa did meet with Scylla a few times more: just check-ins as her new leader and for updates from within Fort Salem. She made sure to check in with all of her agents, as frequently as she dared, her first few weeks as leader of their faction. None of the field agents were supposed to come to the safe house until their missions were complete, because they may be tailed, so Willa would always meet them in specific places, sending out messages beforehand so that her agents would know the rendezvous point. And she did it…to establish her presence. To remind her agents that they worked for someone. That that someone had a face, and a name, and they answered to her.
And it would do them good to remember that.
So she knew that when she gave the order for the attack…any one of them would accept. But she needed to think of who would actually back down, once they realized the full extent of the mission…despite the possible consequences.
Of all of her agents, in the field…Scylla was the closest to Middlebury. Scylla was on campus at Fort Salem, and…well, Willa had observed that Scylla seemed to be able to get away from Fort Salem with impressive, if slightly concerning, ease.
Then again…she had been a Dodger, as well. Dodgers were like mice: if there was a way in or out, they would find it. Scylla was no doubt resourceful, which had likely served her well at Fort Salem and during her early days with Spree.
Besides already being at Fort Salem, that resourcefulness had Willa feeling, over all, very confident in Scylla’s ability to get Raelle to Spree. She was certainly Raelle’s type: charming, if a little closed-off. Trouble with a coquettish smile.
She was a good Spree candidate. Hated the military. Willa had a small, personal file on each of her recruits, and it had been passed down from the last leader. She’d read all of Scylla’s, empty as it mostly was. The information about her parents was in it, along with her orders to act as a spy at Fort Salem after a few other missions that proved her loyalty to Spree. There was no specific information about these “missions”, but from what Willa could see, Scylla hadn’t belonged to any other factions (much less known violent ones) and had likely just been on information recon before being sent to Fort Salem.
She’d been sent there for training, a fact that had been scribbled and underlined and circled, in her file. Coming from a family of Dodgers, it would make sense that she had been in dire need of the education that really, only Fort Salem had the authority on. Necros were as mysterious as they were revered, and Fort Salem was one of the best for training them. She would be of much better use to Spree after she’d properly learned her specific branch of Work, and all it entailed. And she would be relatively safe at Fort Salem, certainly safer than at the safe house.
Based on her file alone, despite Scylla’s seeming cunning and resourcefulness, she’d been sent to Fort Salem as soon as she was able to take the oath, and it had been likely, solely for Necro training. Perhaps she had been told it was a spy mission, so that she wouldn’t throw a fit about having to say the words. Or perhaps her old leader had just told her that they needed her to be strong, and the military would do that work for them, and perhaps had promised her more assignments upon completion of her program.
Either option was plausible.
Willa sighed again, shaking her head.
At least...the luring of her daughter to Spree, that much, she trusted Scylla with. That much didn’t require murder, on a large scale. That didn’t require Work, didn’t require Necro specialization, didn’t require anything but some confidence and subtly, and she trusted Scylla to be capable of both of those, but…
Could…could she give the Middlebury assignment to Scylla?
Scylla was inexperienced, but eager. Smart. Sharp: the way she spoke, her words deliberate, saying something but also nothing. She’d only been in Spree for a couple years, and likely, most of her first year had been simple training in Spree Work, and whatever couple of missions she’d been tested with. And then she had been sent to Fort Salem, which was perfect for Willa’s secret mission, but it clearly hadn’t been Scylla’s idea of an ideal assignment, no matter how much she tried to play it off like she didn’t mind. No matter how much she tried to say that, as long as it was for their cause, she was okay with just…waiting. Learning. Growing stronger.
She was eager. She wanted to do more. She felt like Fort Salem wasn’t enough. She wanted to do something more concrete for their cause, her rose-colored glasses preventing her from seeing just how gruesome that could truly be…
Maybe this new mission could humble her a bit. Make her realize the shit they could be having her do. Make her realize how good she had it, learning and biding her time at Fort Salem.
And, well…Willa didn’t know Scylla well, but she doubted Scylla had been made to kill anyone. It just wasn’t what their faction did. Scylla struck her as the type to bottle her emotions, but she still had them, and that would be important. She was eager to serve Spree, but she was also smart, Willa could tell. She would know the scale of the attack. She would understand its magnitude. She would grasp, perhaps better than the other agents that Willa had met, the devastation. She would be able to conceptualize it better, because she was clever. And that would be crucial, because realizing the size of the attack could be a major deterrent, not matter how much she wished to be loyal to Spree. Her common sense, with any luck, would outweigh her eagerness: would shatter her rose glasses.
Would break her out of her inexperience and naïveté.
And if…if Willa could give this assignment to an agent, who then couldn’t do it…she could use that as an excuse. She could tell the higher ups that this wasn’t what her faction did, and she had tried and had assigned it to Scylla, and Scylla had failed, and she could “punish” Scylla behind closed doors, and the higher ups could try to give it to someone else. She could pass it off. She could absolve herself of the responsibility. She could save herself the heavy heart of knowing she had given the order to end so many lives. So many civilian lives, Edwin’s face flashing in her mind’s eye.
It was a glimmer of hope: a small way to not compromise herself with Spree, nor compromise her secret, hidden morals.
Of all of her agents in the field…Willa eyed the order on her desk as she thought.
Of all of her agents in the field…Scylla was actually the one she needed most to stay put. But Spree didn’t know that. Her higher-ups didn’t really…know, about her little side mission. It was between her, Scylla, and the few operatives still with her in the house. But they thought it was official Spree business, and Willa simply…didn’t correct them. They all answered to her, after all, and they didn’t even have a way of contacting Willa’s bosses: hell, Willa barely had a way to do that. The pipeline was, for all intents and purposes, one-way.
The problem, then, was that really…she didn’t have an excuse for not sending Scylla. She needed Scylla in Fort Salem, but she had no way of justifying that to anyone who may ask without bringing suspicion, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t need yet another reason for Spree to doubt her.
Of all of her operatives, quite simply, from Spree’s perspective…Scylla was the best option. The option Willa had the least excuses to not use. She was the closest to Middlebury. Scylla was at Fort Salem, and had been there for a year: two days wouldn’t be a detriment to her mission. She wasn’t following anyone. She wasn’t assigned to any specific person. She was simply…there, biding her time, being trained by the military, letting them make her powerful. And it wasn’t like she was the only Spree agent on campus, even if she was the only one of Willa’s. Indeed, Fort Salem was well-covered: Willa had no reason to not send Scylla to Middlebury. She was free as a bird, caged on the campus, and Spree would ask Willa why she hadn’t let their little bird fly.
It actually…it could work out nicely, even if it was a risk to Willa’s own, secret plan. Scylla’s low-risk assignment within Fort Salem’s walls made her ideal, compared to her counterparts on their various missions. She was available, and eager, and indeed, picking someone else could also be seen as suspicious. As jeopardizing actual missions.
And Scylla was…younger, than the other agents Willa had in the field. Younger, less exposed to the horrors that Spree were known for, untouched by the more violent side of the organization. Scylla was loyal to Spree but only knew their violence in theory, and asking her to commit such an act, on such a scale…it was a big thing to ask.
Huge.
…and Scylla may cave under the pressure. She seemed tough, but Willa was skeptical as to how much of her confidence was pure perseverance, and how much of it was bravado. And, well…even tough nuts cracked with enough force.
And this assignment…it would be too much. It was too much for Willa, and all she had to do was try and give it to someone.
She picked up the page, the message written in plain, neat cursive on creased cardstock. She folded it over her middle finger and tapped it on her desk, thinking.
It…it could work. It could actually be…perfect. As much as Willa needed Scylla at Fort Salem…this could actually be the perfect excuse to keep her there. She could give the attack to Scylla: she was closest, she was chomping at the bit for a new assignment, and indeed, giving it to anyone else would be…suspicious. And Scylla was just young enough that the horrors of the assignment may shock her out of actually doing it.
And when it got back to Willa and to Spree that Scylla hadn’t been able carry out her orders, her “punishment” could be to continue to be relegated, or even exiled, to Fort Salem. And considering what the military had done to her parents…forcing her to continue there could perhaps be seen as punishment enough.
Willa could see it all unfolding in her mind’s eye. She would give the order, and Scylla would eagerly accept, not fully aware of what said order entailed. Even still, she would accept: Willa knew she was ready to be free of Fort Salem, even if for only a few hours. She would then go to Vermont, get the weapon and the details of the assignment. Drive to her destination as she started to realize what, exactly her orders truly were, and what they meant. And with a sinking feeling in her stomach, Willa’s little spy from Fort Salem would see all the people at the mall: all of those families just like her own. Mothers and fathers out with their children, just trying to enjoy their lives, just trying to have a good day and celebrate.
And she would back down. She would back down because she couldn’t be the same monster that the military was: because she couldn’t do what they did but to hundreds more families. Because she was young and not yet entirely jaded, like Willa’s other field agents. And because her eagerness showed her inexperience: her naïveté. And when the reality of what Spree truly was finally hit her…at the realization of ending the lives of so many, would she be able to do it? Because as a Necro, she would know death and would know that so much death was an imbalance. She would feel it, on top of that. She would know it in a way that no one else would, and Willa knew that would weigh on her.
Would stop her.
After all…her problem was with the military, not with civilians. Of that, Willa had little doubt. Civilians hadn’t been the ones to hunt her parents. Civilians hadn’t been the ones to force her and her family on the run. As such…an attack on civilians (and on so many, at that) could possibly, hopefully, be too much.
At any rate, it stood to reason that Scylla wouldn’t be able to go through with it, and so Willa nodded to herself. On top of that, Spree wouldn’t be able to say anything against Willa: she had sent the most appropriate candidate based on the importance of the missions of her other agents. It was a win-win.
So, that was that.
She took a day to think on it. To consider all of her options.
And she sent the orders out.
And she wasn’t…Scylla wasn’t supposed to actually do it.
She wasn’t.
But she did.