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“It’s not often I receive visitors from the world above.”
Dr. O’Deorain certainly looked like a being that would live in the dark underbelly of civilization. Long, slender, and sharp, her claw-like nails tapped at her deadened arm flesh, icy purple with ropey black veins running throughout. Half her face was masked by a metal plate, the result of a chemical reaction gone wrong, or perhaps right.
She moved in silence, like a shadow, as she rose to meet Brigitte at her lab door. Suddenly, Brigitte no longer felt like such a giant.
In fact, she felt very small.
“How can I help you, Miss Lindholm?” Her voice was low and seductive. Easy to listen to. Easy to be convinced by.
A thought drifted through Brigitte’s mind that if the devil was real, this is probably what she’d be like.
Brigitte shrank back a step. One hand wrang out the other as she felt her gaze pushed to the floor. Anything to avoid meeting those intense eyes, eyes that studied her like a live specimen.
“I was just...” She bumped up against the wall, and the rest of her sentence fled her mind.
Still, Moira leaned in closer, flicking her gaze over Brigitte’s young face.
Brigitte cleared her throat, then stood up as tall as she could. “I was hoping I could talk to you about something. Something personal.”
Moira’s intense stare softened. She drew back a little, pulling back her bony shoulders.
“Oh?” was all she said.
Growing up as an Overwatch brat, Brigitte had met some “unique” people. But none seemed quite as unique as herself. Though she was only a teenager, Brigitte often felt like there was something inside her that was too big and too strange to understand. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the way her body had changed in recent years, and, for reasons she did not have the words to articulate, she felt deeply ashamed.
There’s nothing wrong with you, Fareeha had announced in her usual loud, oblivious tone. She’d slung an arm around Brigitte’s wide shoulders and offered her that big-sister smile. Nothing wrong with not wanting to be a girly-girl. Trust me on that one.
Brigitte had returned her smile, but all that had done was solidify her feelings of aloneness. Nobody here gets it. Not Fareeha, not Reinhardt, not her parents. Not even Lena, who seemed like she would be the most likely to understand, yet had tilted her head like a confused dog the single time Brigitte had tried to explain herself.
That left only one option – the woman she wasn’t even supposed to know worked for them.
For all her eeriness, Moira must have read the seriousness behind Brigitte’s words, for she eased out of the girl’s personal space, swept a hand out toward an empty chair at her table, and said, in her usual formal tone, “Have a seat.”
The table was cluttered with papers and equipment. In the middle of it sat a cage with two rabbits inside. They had little room to move in the small enclosure, bumping into one another as they tried to get a look at the new human in their space.
When Brigitte sat down in the weathered metal chair, one came right up to the metal bars, watching her with round, wet eyes.
Moira sat down opposite her. She had not taken her eyes off Brigitte once.
“I hope you know that you’ve piqued my curiosity, Miss Lindholm,” she said as she steepled her fingers on the table’s surface. “Coming to yours truly with something personal?”
“Trust me,” Brigitte said, “I tried everyone else first. Even Winston.”
Moira chuckled wryly. “And you found they’re all fools who profess to know it all, yet know nothing of importance.”
Brigitte frowned. “I wouldn’t say that. They just don’t understand this thing.”
Moira sat back in her seat. “And what is this ‘thing’, if I may?”
The rabbits were both staring at her now. Brigitte tried not to pay them any attention, but it was tough to ignore their imploring gazes.
Tapping her fingers on the table, she eventually said, “You like to wear men’s clothes and stuff.”
One of Moira’s eyebrows had been burnt off in the same experiment that had damaged her face. That left her only one to raise at Brigitte.
“I mean, and you have short hair. And you wear suits, and, um...” Brigitte’s words weakened the longer Moira stared at her. By the end of her sentence, she could barely even hear herself.
Moira rested her hands in her lap and continued to study Brigitte, waiting for her to finish.
“...You know what? Never mind.” Brigitte pushed her chair out. “Sorry to bother you, Doctor.”
“What’s the bother?”
Brigitte paused halfway through getting up. Moira offered her another small, enigmatic smile.
“I’m not one easily offended, Miss Lindholm.” She nodded to the seat Brigitte had vacated. “Please. Finish your thought.”
Brigitte felt big and bulky as ever as she sat down in the narrow chair, her thighs spilling over the sides of the old thing. Moira, spindly as she was, took up almost no space at all.
“I was just wondering...” Brigitte took a heavy breath, then put her question out there into the universe. “If you’ve ever felt like you wish you had been born, like, a boy.”
Moira’s response came first as a silent, pensive nod. Then she said, “I see. Quite the question.”
“You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to-”
“I’ve never felt that way,” she replied. “I’m quite comfortable as I am.”
“...Oh.” Brigitte scratched the chair against the floor again. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You’re a skittish one, aren’t you?” The comment halted Brigitte yet again. Moira extended her healthy right hand out and gestured at the chair once more. “Should I cage you with the rabbits?”
Brigitte laughed nervously. “Sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” She brought her fingers together again in front of her. “But I’ve a question of my own now. Are you experiencing feelings of that nature, Brigitte?”
No one had ever asked her directly. Instead they’d played dumb, acting like she was asking out of the clear blue sky. It must have been easier to deal with that way.
She felt her face flush under Moira’s gaze, though that gaze wasn’t harsh–in fact, it was about as soft as she’d ever seen the older woman.
Brigitte traced a circle on the table with a fingertip, over and over and over. “I just...”
Moira waited patiently for her to finish.
Every word felt like it burned her throat. “I don’t know if I...”
When it became clear she wasn’t going to finish her sentence any time soon, Moira held up a hand. Then she rose from her seat, and beckoned for Brigitte to follow.
In keeping with the ruse that Overwatch didn’t associate with Dr. O’Deorain, Moira’s living quarters were down in the underground level of the base as well. She, like all of the agents, did not live there year-round, but she certainly seemed to be there more than most.
The chambers were dark when they stepped inside. Moira flipped a switch on the wall, powering on an old lamp beside a weathered cot. Warm light filled the room, and it revealed very little in the way of furniture or decoration.
While the other agents had walls filled with photographs, Moira had nothing but a handful of framed degrees. The room being underground meant that there were no windows, and that the cold of the ground around them seeped constantly into the grey metal walls.
Against the far wall of the room sat an unadorned dresser, with just a few things placed neatly atop it. Moira drifted over to it, wrapped her claws around one of the drawer handles, and pulled it gingerly open.
Brigitte was uncertain what she was going to pull out. Knowing Moira, it could have been anything.
Moira turned around and presented the object to Brigitte. A purple satin tie, old and fraying at its seams. Moira held it in both hands, as though it were likely to fall apart right then and there.
“This was my very first tie,” she explained. “I bought it in the men’s section of a clothing store back home that no longer exists.”
Brigitte stared down at it. “Huh.”
Lowering the tie back into the drawer, Moira said, “I was never feminine. My old Catholic mother hated it.” A small chuckle told Brigitte she wasn’t particularly troubled by that. “Once I reached the age where she could no longer stuff me in a dress for church, it became a point of bitter contention between us.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Moira closed the drawer and returned her attention to the teenager beside her. “At the risk of sounding...overly grandiose,” she said, “I believe that what we are meant to be will be, no matter what external forces attempt to interfere.” Her gaze went steely for a moment. “No one has ever allowed you to explore your identity freely, have they?”
“Well, it’s not that they haven’t allowed it,” Brigitte replied. “They just-”
“Just haven’t allotted you any space to do so.”
Brigitte shrugged.
Moira took a moment, tapping her nails against her forearms with a pace like a racing heart. Her strides were long, even longer than Brigitte’s, as she paced the length of the tiny room and back out into the lab.
“I’m sorry if this was a touchy subject.” Brigitte kept her eyes low, not daring to look up even at the sound of the caged rabbits bumping against the bars. “I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.”
Moira halted. Brigitte practically tripped over her.
“Please stop apologizing, Brigitte.” Moira turned back to her, her lips pulled into a taut frown. “Truthfully, I’m flattered you came to me about this. And I’m...disheartened that it took you so many attempts to find anyone willing to listen.”
“They listen,” Brigitte said. “They just don’t seem to understand.”
“And how could they?” Moira laughed, but there was no joy in it. “They’ve never had to expand their worldview to include people like us.”
“Like...us?”
Moira looked as though she wanted to say more–her lips parted, and Brigitte could see the hint of sharp, filed canines behind them. An intentional effort to look frightening. To scare people away.
“Brigitte,” she started. But then she brought a hand to her chin, thoughtful, and seemed to change the direction of her statement. “Do you think you could return to me in a while? I need a bit of time to organize my thoughts on this matter.”
Brigitte nodded uncertainly. “Sure. Um, like, in a few hours? Or-”
“I know you typically join them all for dinner.” The heavy heels of her men’s dress shoes struck the metal floor in a way that made her seem even larger than she already was. No longer was she moving like a silent wraith. “Go do that. And then return to me, if you please.”
“Okay.”
She would have thought confessing something like that would make her feel ashamed. But as she left Moira’s lab, she felt an odd sort of giddiness, like she’d shed a weight she hadn’t even realized she was carrying around.
Of course, the moment she went back upstairs, she picked that weight right back up again.
I can’t believe I said all that.
Lena appeared beside her in a burst of light, spilling some of the food off Brigitte’s plate. “Whoops!” Lena stacked it back up for her, then appeared at her other side to wipe up the crumbs with a napkin, then disappeared entirely, leaving the napkin floating to the floor.
I said it out loud.
Fareeha came and sat down at her other side, plate stacked nearly just as high. “Hey,” she said, elbowing Brigitte lightly. “You hitting the gym later?”
I told Moira, of all people!
“Ah! Brigitte!” Her plate quivered as Reinhardt stormed over to her. His tray full of plates hit the table hard enough to rattle her teeth. “I was just looking for you to test the stew! Now we have to rely on your father’s old man taste.”
“You’re one to talk, old man,” Torbjörn hopped up into a chair beside Reinhardt. “Did you remember to take the bones out of the fish this time?”
“...Of course I did!” Reinhardt leaned across the table to them. He loudly whispered, “Okay, don’t eat the stew.”
Brigitte pushed the bowl away from her. It was hard to feel hungry, anyway.
“I don’t think there’s any bones in here.” Lena was already halfway through her bowl. “If there are, I swallowed ‘em already.”
Fareeha took a juicy bite of her veggie taco. “I don’t trust like that,” she said. “So, gym? Or nah?”
Brigitte tried to take a bite of the burger she had never really planned on eating. “I can’t,” she said through her mouthful.
Fareeha frowned. “Aw. Why no-”
Lena burst into a choking fit. She slapped the table a few times, gagging.
“Oh, just teleport it out of ya with yer fancy thing,” Torb grunted.
Lena perked up. Then she disappeared in a flash of blue light. The stew bowl filled back up in front of Brigitte’s eyes. Moments later, Lena came walking into the dining hall, greeting everyone with a triumphant smile and a thumbs up.
Nobody here gets it.
Fareeha, Lena, Reinhardt, her father...they were all perfectly comfortable as they were. Or at least they seemed to be.
Thankfully, they also seemed oblivious to her struggles. It was a curse and a blessing, as she at least didn’t have to explain herself to anyone else. The only person here who ever actually worried about her was...
“Ah! You started without me!”
The one voice Brigitte was dreading rang through the room. Reinhardt quickly dropped his food. Lena pretended to just be blowing on hers to cool it off.
If there was one person who could see right through anyone’s façade, it was Angela. The good doctor plunked herself down beside Fareeha, plate full of small, healthy portions that on a normal day wouldn’t even sate Brigitte as a snack.
“You were too slow!” Fareeha waved her off, then took another bite. “Can’t wait forever.”
“Well I’m sorry I like to sanitize after a day of rooting around pulling bullets out of guts before I eat.”
It was a small crew tonight. The others were out on various recon missions, stationed all across the globe. Some wouldn’t be back for days–others for months.
A bigger crowd would have been easier to hide in.
“So how was everyone’s day?” Angela started up the small talk almost as soon as she sat down.
“I almost blew my fingers off with a rocket,” Fareeha offered.
“Lovely.”
“I forgot to take the fish bones out of the stew,” Reinhardt said sadly.
Angela nodded. “You’ll remember next time, I’m sure.”
“I almost died choking on a fish bone!” Lena added.
“My goodness, I’m busy for a few hours and we nearly have a mass casualty event.”
Brigitte’s silence felt noticeable, but she could not think of anything to say. She tried taking another bite of her food. It slid down her throat before landing heavily in her stomach, where it likely sit for the rest of the night.
“And how are you, Brigitte?” Angela’s inevitable question, soft as it was, was like a rock to the face.
Brigitte stalled, taking another bite of her meal. She hoped somebody else would start talking. They did not.
“I’m fine,” she eventually said.
“Just fine?”
Brigitte stared down at the table. “Nothing special.”
She knew the answer would invite further probing by Angela after dinner, but it was difficult to feign the sort of jolliness that folks like Reinhardt and Lena exuded naturally. That just wasn’t her speed.
The conversation blessedly picked back up without her, dominated by Reinhardt’s booming voice and Fareeha’s raucous laughter. They were both themselves, unabashedly. Lena, Angela, and her father, they were like that, too. No shame. No second-guessing themselves every step of the way.
The very moment she finished her food, Brigitte shot from the table. As expected, Angela was right behind her, quicker in heels than she had any right to be. At least she had the sense to wait until they’d both left the room to bring the subject up again.
“Brigitte.”
The gentle voice halted her. Brigitte tensed her shoulders, then turned halfway back to her. “Yeah?”
Angela was a fairly tall woman, but even she was dwarfed by Brigitte’s gigantic size. She’d always been tall for a girl, but now that she’d gone through puberty and had those ridiculous growth spurts, she towered over every woman she ever met. It was hard to feel like one of them when you stuck out so very badly.
Dr. Ziegler came up beside Brigitte, resting a hand on her arm. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said softly.
Brigitte gingerly shrugged her off. “I’m okay, Doctor. Thank you.”
“Are you sure?” Angela’s heels clicked across the floor as she hurried to keep pace with Brigitte. “Because you know mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and I may not be a therapist, but–”
Brigitte nodded. “I get it. But I’m okay.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and tried to show Angela a smile. Angela did not seem convinced, but she let Brigitte go.
The moment the doctor’s eyes were off her, Brigitte ducked into the stairwell that descended to the depths of the base.
When she returned to Moira’s lab, Moira was leaning against the wall beside her bookshelf, thumbing through an old tome. She’d removed her lab coat for the day, exposing the neatly-pressed dress shirt and suit pants she typically wore underneath. The coat was hung neatly from a hook on the wall a stretch away, ready for tomorrow’s experiments.
“Dr. O’Deorain?” Brigitte took half a step into the lab, hesitant to enter without her permission. “I’m back.”
Moira clapped the old book shut and looked up at Brigitte with an uncharacteristic warmth to her gaze. “Just in time.” In contrast to the fast-paced conversations of the other Overwatch agents, Moira spoke slowly and with purpose. “I found what I was looking for.”
“You were looking for something?” Brigitte pulled out the same chair from earlier. This time, there was a blanket thrown over the rabbits’ cage.
Moira sat down opposite her. She set the book down between them, facing Brigitte.
Brigitte looked down at the unadorned cover. Queer Masculinity: A Celebration.
“One of my personal favorites.” Moira’s claw tips settled on the book cover. She pushed it lightly over to Brigitte.
“I-” Brigitte hesitantly pulled it toward herself. “I mean, thank you. But I’m not even sure of anything–like, I don’t know if I’m...”
Moira silenced her with a raised hand.
“In my younger years,” she said, the skin around her eyes creasing as she squinted at the memory, “I believed that everything had to have an absolute solution. It’s the reason I was initially so drawn to the sciences–neat, conclusive answers that could be proven or disproven with empirical evidence.” A low chuckle rumbled in her throat. “How quickly that was revealed as a farce.”
Brigitte looked from Moira down to the book, then back again.
“Despite how simple some things may seem on paper,” Moira said, “when one factors in the human element, it becomes clear that most questions will never have a simple answer.”
“Do you have an answer?” Brigitte asked. “I mean...about yourself?”
Moira leaned back in the chair. “I’ve had many over the years,” she said. “I’m not sure a single one of them has been correct.”
Brigitte laughed. Moira did not.
Clearing her throat, Brigitte focused on the book instead. “I don’t feel like I want to be a man,” she said. “But...I like being ‘one of the guys’, you know? I don’t feel any connection to, like, womanhood, or whatever. Most days I don’t even feel like a woman.”
Moira offered her a sage nod. “And that isn’t an answer that most will understand.”
Brigitte sighed. “No.”
Moira combed her claws through her short, choppy hair. Her nails were meticulously painted, something Brigitte never bothered with. Yet Brigitte loved her own long, soft hair, and could never see herself cutting it short. Was that an acceptable way to be masculine? Was there such a thing?
“Isn’t it amusing, the vast expanse of the human experience?” Moira brought her hands back down onto the table, those painted nails now curled under her hand. “Genetically, all humans are estimated to be as close as ninety-nine-point-eight percent identical.” She slowly opened her fingers again. “And yet, in that tiny fraction of difference...an entire world.”
She thought of all the people she’d met in the Overwatch org alone. There truly was a world of difference within most of them–including her.
Maybe, if everyone truly was so very different, then she really wasn’t such a freak at all.
“You can keep that book for as long as you’d like.” Moira’s voice brought her out of her thoughts. “I think it’s got a lot of life left in it.”
Brigitte took the book and slid it close to her chest.
“Thank you,” she said. “I was starting to think nobody would understand.”
Moira made a small sound, a sound of acceptance and exhaustion. “I’m sorry small minds lack the capacity to understand people like us.”
Like us. Moira was already grouping Brigitte into this category, this unknowable mystery, this mess of gender exploration. It didn’t feel wrong. But it was terrifying to think about.
Maybe Moira was too cynical. Maybe there would be others who’d understand. Or if they didn’t, maybe they could understand in time.
When Brigitte returned to her quarters that night, her head was full of things to think about.
“We’ve apprehended two hostiles,” Lena’s voice crackled in Brigitte’s earpiece. “But there’s one more shut up in the bunker.”
Brigitte polished the head of her mace. “They’re making it easy for me, then.”
The heavy footfall of her boots and the clanking of her armor made it impossible for Brigitte to be stealthy. But that was all right. She didn’t need to be.
This Talon stronghold had multiple hiding spots. The infiltration team Overwatch had sent was forced to split up to cover all of its ground. Again, that was fine. She knew she’d find exactly what she was looking for.
She tossed her head as she made her way toward the bunker, throwing her hair back over her shoulder. The stronghold’s corridors were small and narrow, built for cowardly little mice hiding from the light. Brigitte’s presence dominated the dim little halls. She smirked as her massive shadow swallowed up all the light before her.
The bunker door was locked with a complex digital lock. A smash from her mace solved that problem real fast.
The heavy iron door did not open on its own. Brigitte grabbed hold and yanked it open, grinding a dig mark into the floor along its path.
What little light could pass by Brigitte spilled into the dark room before her. It splashed over a cot against the far wall, across a computer desk with multiple faintly-glowing monitors, and over a table in the center of the room.
At that table, a woman sat, reading a book.
Not until Brigitte’s approaching shadow devoured that light did the woman look up from her reading. Her face was pale, and her skin hung from her face, forming deep purple bags beneath her eyes. Her hair had begun to grey, and the flesh of her left arm had gone from purple to a gangrenous black.
That blackened flesh dripped from her fingertips as she lifted her hand to turn the page. Where it dripped onto the table, it just as quickly evaporated into smoke that then returned to her fingers, rebuilding them.
They stared at each other for a long time. Then Moira said,
“My, my. Look how you’ve grown.”
Brigitte clanked her mace against the cold metal floor. “You’re coming with me.”
Moira tapped her book. Her fingers left a black stain on the old pages.
“But I’m so very engrossed in my reading.”
Brigitte rolled her eyes. From the satchel around her waist, she fetched a pair of handcuffs.
“Oh, is that entirely necessary?” Despite her protest, Moira offered no resistance as Brigitte cuffed her bony wrists. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I don’t know that. I don’t trust you at all anymore.” Brigitte clicked the lock on the cuffs. “Now come on. We’re taking you in for interrogation.”
Over the years, Moira’s posture had apparently taken on a bit of a hunch, leaving them almost exactly at eye level. She studied Brigitte’s face with a look that was impossible to read.
“So I trust you’ve been well,” she said.
Brigitte huffed. “I’m not talking to you.” She reached up to touch her earpiece. “This is Brigitte,” she said. “I’ve got the...”
The arm she held Moira by was cold as death, with loose, clammy skin that seemed like it could slide off her bones at any moment. Her wrists were so thin the cuffs hung from them like bangles. Moira herself was staring down at the floor, her eyes squinted just a bit, deepening every wrinkle around them. The metal in her face had caused spreading scarring and discoloration over the years, forking out across her face like a pink and purple spider web.
She didn’t look like a terrorist. She looked like someone who had been swimming upstream her entire life.
“Got the what, love?” Lena’s voice echoed in her ear.
If Moira heard it, she pretended not to. Her curved, knobby shoulders remained sagged at her sides as she kept her gaze down.
“...Actually, false alarm.” Brigitte released the button on her earpiece.
Moira looked up.
With a grunt, Brigitte pushed the door shut. The only light then came from the blue glow of the computer monitors in the corner.
“Is this a part of the protocol?” Moira asked. The wry note in her voice said she already knew the answer.
Brigitte nodded at the table. “Sit.”
Moira sank her lanky bones down into the old chair.
There wasn’t another seat, but that was fine by Brigitte, who chose to pace the length of the table instead.
“I just want to know,” she said, “why?”
Moira chuckled softly. “An excellent question! I, too, perpetually seek out answers to the vague and unknowable.”
Brigitte slammed her chainmail gloves down on the table. “Don’t get smart with me,” she growled. “I mean why did you join Talon? Why are you working with these terrorists?”
Moira settled her cuffed hands on her lap. “Why are you working with Overwatch? The organization is still outlawed by the United Nations. A criminal offense, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s different,” Brigitte replied.
“Is it?”
Brigitte paused to take a long, grounding breath. I won’t play her games.
“How’s your father?” Moira asked.
“Haven’t you seen the things Talon’s done?” Brigitte pressed on, ignoring Moira's attempt to derail the interrogation. “How can you be okay with that?”
Moira offered her a small shrug. “I’ve learned it’s the price that must be paid for progress.”
“Progress to what? Turning the world into an eternal war hellscape?”
Moira looked her right in the eyes. “That isn’t my intent,” she said, breaking from her usual tone of haughty indifference. “I have to work within my means to try to make a change. Talon has the funding and the resources.”
“Yeah, and the evil people who hurt innocents.”
“As though the rest of the world isn’t full of those.” Her eyes wandered over Brigitte, not unsavory, but similar to the disdainful once-overs her aunt gave her at family gatherings.
Moira’s look wasn’t quite disdainful, though.
Beneath all her armor, it was impossible to make out most of her body. That was by design. She’d never had the courage to broach her issues with anyone since that discussion she’d had all those years ago, with the very person in front of her.
“I looked up to you, you know.” Brigitte’s toughness faltered as she paused in front of Moira. “Everyone else thought you were crazy, but you seemed to understand things nobody else did.”
Moira stared at her wordlessly. Her lips were tightly closed, revealing nothing.
“And since then...there’s still nobody who understands.” She settled a hand on her chest. Three layers of armor, all of a different sort.
The way the shadows fell over Moira’s face when she lowered her head, it was impossible to see anything but the exhaustion tugging at every inch of her.
“Of course not,” she murmured. “Nothing’s changed. I’ve spent my entire life fighting an uphill battle to better humanity, and they don’t even want to better themselves.”
“I don’t think experimenting on non-consenting people is a good way to grow awareness for gender stuff-”
“I’ve moved beyond looking for ‘awareness’,” Moira cut in. “The next era of humankind is here, whether those imbeciles want to see it or not.”
“And what is the ‘next era’, exactly?”
Moira smiled serenely. “I hardly want to spoil the surprise. But I think you’ll like it quite a bit, Brigitte.”
Brigitte glowered. “Okay, I’m arresting you now.”
“No, please!” Moira held up a weak hand in protest. “Spare a frail old intellectual like myself...”
Brigitte started to rebut, then realized Moira shouldn’t have been able to raise one hand at all. It was uncuffed. In fact, the handcuffs were lying on the floor.
A rush of cold air prickled the back of Brigitte’s neck. Suddenly Moira was beside her, a wispy trail of shadow curling around Brigitte’s boots.
Brigitte instinctively swung her mace. It sliced right through Moira’s torso. A gooey blackness, like thick ink, dribbled down from her upper half, then joined with her bottom half, reforming her flesh perfectly.
“What the hell?” She attempted another hit, but Moira had disappeared again. One corner of the room seemed to actively devour what faint light existed in it. A moment later, Moira was over there, pulled up taut and proper.
“Cool new trick,” Brigitte snarked. “You should do birthday parties.”
Moira laughed heartily. “I have hope for you yet, Brigitte. You haven’t completely closed yourself off to the strange side of the universe.”
“I’m closed off to whatever this is.” She spun in a half-circle, trying to keep up with Moira’s frenetic movements. “You’re not going to get away, you know. There are more of us outside, and-”
Moira appeared directly in front of her, close enough for Brigitte to smell her acidic breath.
“It’s been lovely reconnecting, my little protégé,” she said. “Perhaps we’ll do it again soon.”
Before Brigitte could even think of a reply, Moira disappeared. A shadowy trail slithered under the tiny crack in the door, then vanished into the unknown.
Brigitte stared at the door, dumbfounded.
“Brigitte?” Lena’s voice crackled again. “Any sight of her?”
All that remained of Moira was the book she’d left on the table. Brigitte leaned over and flipped the book shut, revealing its title.
Man, Reimagined: Towards a Radical New Humanity, by Dr. Moira O’Deorain.
Brigitte blinked down at it. She wrote this?
“Brigitte? Is everything all right?”
Brigitte picked the book up and shook it. It didn’t seem to have any tracking devices attached. It also didn’t look as though it had ever been read.
“Sorry, I couldn’t locate her,” Brigitte said, tucking the book into the depths of her satchel. “Maybe next time.”