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Shannon flicked her tail. She did not like the high pitched alarm. He turned it off for her, and set to searching through the data the ping had sent him. Keller was already getting a Taskforce together, ready to search the sight and ascertain as much information as they could gather.

When he was certain what he was looking at—before Keller called it in—there was a heartbeat where he could do nothing but stare blankly at the picture of her. He did not cry. He could not physically do so. Hadn't been able to for years. What he could do was chitter, or make a sound so high pitched that it made dogs squeal and howl as if the moon was coming down. (The scream in his head could not escape anymore than tears, for it was too human a sound for his body.)

He was a plugged kettle filling with steam, the pressure building and building inside him. This was wrong. This wasn't how the story went. He couldn't—not again. He refused.

Leviathan got to work. (I watched myself flick through the city's cameras and the other feeds we'd hacked.) He was on coms with Keller, learning what Keller's team found out; the tires were from a Draft-issue truck, and her cane cracked in the gutter.

(The screaming inside me was growing into a buzzing horde of locusts, and it would not stop.) "Where was she? Where was she? Where?" Leviathan muttered as he worked.

He would not lose her.

And then, between Keller's information on the ground, and the cameras—and an understanding of his Enemies—he found her.

"He knows where they took her," he chittered.

"Sir?" Keller asked. "Who knows?"

Leviathan shot to his feet. He stalked across the room, closing Shanon's protective shield as he opened his personal armory. He began to kit up, forgetting about the comms, forgetting about everyone other than her. Leviathan stalked through the rows and rows of the weapons and tools he'd designed. Something in here would do the trick, something in here had to be enough. (Failure was not an option.)

"Leviathan will not lose her to him. He will not. Leviathan is stronger than he was when—He is strong enough, he will find her, and he will blast her captors to hell. He'll break Dovecote like the fragile egg that it is." 

Leviathan tested a couple of his blasters, and was unsatisfied with their strength. He searched other tools in his inventory, until he uncovered the pearl—it was the size of his head and took two hands to hold. "There you are, my lovely, with you, Leviathan will melt that building, as if it were ice. And then he can scoop Her out of the wreckage and bring Her back where she belongs."

"Shit," Keller's voice broke over coms. "Boss, Sir. That's not the weapon you tested last summer, is it? Didn't you say it was unfinished?" 

"Leviathan will destroy Dovecote." He chittered, and hauled the pearl out to his desk. He needed something to carry it in. "He will decimate it and leave its ruin to show all who would stand against him. No one takes her, no one touches her, no one is allowed to harm her and survive." 

"Sir," Keller said. "Sir, raiding Dovecote won't work. You know it won't." 

Leviathan stalked back to his armory. "Leviathan has designed many terrible weapons; something among them will eradicate Dovecote."

He found other weapons he created, things he'd thought of as toys but were likely to be useful. He shoved a vest with many pockets on to hold everything. When he could carry nothing else—several blasters and grenades were strapped to various parts of his body as well—Leviathan closed up his armory and stalked from the room. He knew the layout of Dovecote, and had a decent idea as to where she'd be. 

His heart pounded hard in his chest as he listed every single thing he would do to anyone that so much as harmed a hair on her head. He stalked through his complex, ignoring all his minions who stumbled out of his way. He could feel their awed stares, no doubt curious about his monologuing. He stormed out to the Darkling.

"Sir," Keller interrupted his careful description on how the laser in his smallest penlight would turn bone-marrow to goo, and cause a cascading effect that would reduce the entire body to slime. That one would not work on Supercollider, unfortunately.

"Leviathan," Keller snapped. 

Leviathan hissed. He did not like being interrupted, but he knew he ought to listen to his head of security; the man might have an update he had missed once he'd walked away from the computers.

"What did the surveillance tapes show? We both know that they will have taken Anna somewhere that is extremely secure. She will be in the basement, or one of the deeper sub-basements. If we try to attack Dovecote head on, they will simply kill her before we get close. If you hold any hope of retrieving her, while she remains in Dovecote, that will not be the moment."

"Leviathan can reach her."

"Sir, they snatched her, they didn't kill her. That MO suggests that they plan on keeping her alive. They have no legal way to hold her, and killing her would cause them problems. We should wait and find out what our mole says. My money is on them moving her, Sir."

"Yes," Leviathan stalked up the aisle in the Darkling. "They would like it if they could use her for experiments, especially if they—" Leviathan cut himself off. He turned on his heel and went back up the aisle. He knew too much about the kinds of experiments the Draft liked to do. He should have thought of that. (It was hard to think past the screaming.) 

"The Vet is a much more tactically sound location for a retrieval that will succeed."

Put in those terms, Leviathan paused. He glanced out the window. He'd work so hard to make certain that nothing like—that it wouldn't happen again. He'd hardly had anyone close to himself (Not after the things Supercollider had done) and yet, when he wasn't paying attention, his Auditor had become—

He'd tried to keep a distance, remembering the history of chivalry he'd once been obsessed with, and decided that he could stand back from the world and allow nothing to touch him as long as he was remote. Everything he'd done to protect those who worked for him, none of it had been enough. 

Leviathan made that high pitched noise dogs hated and slashed at the seats closest to him. The rip of fabric did not alleviate the scream within his chest. The power in the Darkling flickered around him. "Leviathan can blast his way in there and get her out."

"Sir," Keller said, and his voice had dropped low. "This is not the kind of mission where going solo is advisable. What if Anna needs medical when you arrive? What if she needs to be carried out of there? I have no doubt that you could infiltrate Dovecote, Sir, but you only have two hands and two feet and I have never seen you levitate anything. Can you, alone, fight and care for Anna?"

He did not have to say that what he doubted was that Leviathan could get back out. Leviathan hissed again. He stalked out of the Darkling. "Come and see Leviathan as soon as you return." 

He snapped off the comms before Keller answered.

Their meeting was short lived only because their contact within the Vet got back to them quickly and with great alarm; a medical suite in the Vet was being prepped. After that, more staff was called in. The meeting size grew and grew, until there were plenty of people who, in Leviathan's opinion, were redundant to the problem at hand. He was used to redundancies in his work, however, and did not shoo them out. Someone thought they might be needed, and in his usual mood, he trusted the upper level staff to know how to plan a mission.

(I was not in my usual mood.)

He stalked around the perimeter of the meeting room, listening to ideas. There was already a team studying the usefulness of getting her out of Dovecote right now. He'd snapped at anyone who tried to suggest it couldn't work without running the numbers.

One wall was overtaken with Her image and general profile. Every time he came to the spot beneath her chin, he paused to look up at her. He ignored the staff that looked at him warily, especially whenever they noticed the weapons he still carried. He played with one of his blasters, and when the arguing would get too much he'd snarl at them all. He waved his arms (I wanted to flip a table, and regretted that these were attached to the floor) and hissed at his people.

"Leviathan will not stand for this bickering! Leviathan has called you here to hear plans. Tell me the ways she can be retrieved with the best probability of success, or get out."

At once several people scattered. The ones that knew him better tried to offer terrible suggestions, possibilities he'd already discarded.

Keller spoke up then. "We should wait until she's moved. We know where she will be, and we know the timeline on how fast they can move her from Dovecote to the Vet. Whatever procedure they will do to her—" He met Leviathan's eyes for a moment, then scanned the room. "We will not allow it to happen. We will figure out a way to retrieve her from the Vet."

"No." Leviathan gestured to the side of the room that was hard at work. "They will continue working out a way to get her out of Dovecote."

"Of course, Sir."

The plan they eventually settled on was not perfect but he had made certain that everything was timed efficiently, all the way down to the millisecond. They would get her out, and they would have enough medical personnel to cart her off without greater risk to her, no matter what had been done.

Leviathan continued to stalk the halls, muttering to himself as he did so, and it was a near thing, for him to take Keller's plan, to believe the man when he said they'd have greater success if they waited. If anything changed, if they got any new information, Leviathan would head straight to Dovecote and he would not hold back his rage.

He would not fail her.

When they found her, he would have feared the worst if the monitors around the room hadn't showed that she lived. He grabbed her wrist, to make certain she was there, she was real, and he promised he would not allow anything like this ever again.

He would devour the world before he allowed her to be harmed so on his watch a second time. "Anna, can you hear me?" Her name in his voice was a balm to his soul, and by the look on her face, it soothed something in her as well.

Had she not known he would come for her? That expression, that wretched grief in her eye that blossomed into utter relief. Leviathan could not understand how, for all her brilliance, she had not seen it.

(I had never told her.)

They returned to base. Leviathan waited for medical staff to save and then repair his Auditor. When the Doctor at last finished and she was moved to recovery, he stood in her room among the beeping and gasping machines, and there was only silence in Leviathan's head.

He was utterly still. He could not look away from her. (The screaming had stopped.)

After the surgeries, I sat by her bedside as often as I could as I waited for her to wake up. I did not hold her hand. They told me that I could. Told me it might help. I could not. This was my fault. I shouldn't have allowed her to leave the base without security. I'd known our enemies might do something like this. It was why those who worked for me lived here, why I was so careful about security. I protected my people. (I was glad to note that I had stopped declaring everything I experienced in the third person. I had begun to find such behavior tiresome after a time.)

I was usually better at managing things when my people were targeted, but it had been—Anyone daring to target my inner circle was rare. It was possible they hadn't known what she was, and it made me seethe that anyone might meet her and not notice her utter brilliance. She shined like a star, like the sun itself, and I could not fathom how I had allowed her to have been so drastically endangered. Not even endangered; she'd been harmed so severely that I'd been forced to order the medical team to do more than fix up her eyesight.

It irked me that she hadn't been able to consent to everything I'd had them do. I'd had the whole thing planned out, though I had given up the scheme when I decided it was too dangerous to activate her powers. I had tabled the idea quickly and had never mentioned it to her. Now, because of Supercollider, (because of my own oversight) it had become the only logical choice. I would repair her, and she would learn to tap her well of potential.  

That was why I did not touch her as she slept after the surgeries were over. I stayed by her bedside, talking to her. (Around the third day, I told her I could not lose her, and that I was sorry I had not stopped them from touching her. I admitted this and then fell silent for a time, glad that I could no longer blush in any form most people could see.)

Now that I could see her, speak to her, read her vitals whenever I wished, my rage cooled again, and had gone as glacial as the surface of the dark side of the moon. Cold as I'd been since—

Sometimes, when I was away from her for too long, I worried she would not wake. That I had tried to force too much change. When this thought fought me too much, and would not allow me what little rest I took, I wandered to her bedside again, allowed myself to look upon her. She was small and bandaged in that hospital bed. Machines kept her brain scans where I could easily see them, her heart rate where I could hear it. If—when—she woke she would be different. She would see the world differently, if everything he'd had them do worked the way it should. I will have made her...more...and I did not yet know what price I would have to pay for what I'd done. Would she still be mine? Would she remain The Auditor? In such moments of swirling doubts, I almost wished that my body could cry. The sheer release of my relief that she was alive, that I could touch her if I dared, might help me think through everything I wanted to do, everything I needed to plan to take full use of my Auditor if—when—she returned to work.

It was for the best that I did not cry. I would freak out my minions, and they are such little people that it might hamper their work. I had no desire to cause an incident. Still, when I was left alone with her, I couldn't always stop myself from chittering, though I refrained from making that shrill sound. The machines do not like it any more than dogs do.

Eventually they took her off the ventilator, and then weaned her off the drugs keeping her asleep. It was as good a sign as any I might receive. I threw myself into work. There were many fires to put out, and other things I had been ignoring, so there was much to keep my attention. 

The day they called to say she was awake, I was nearby. I went right to her, went to see if she was...whole. 

"Auditor, do you know who I am?" If I had still been a man, my voice would have trembled. Instead, it had gone silky, smoothed and warmed by concern. (How deeply I was concerned.)

I stood at her bedside, looking down at her.

"Yes, Sir. Am I home?" 

I didn't touch her. I wanted to cup her cheek beneath the bandages. I rarely thought about touching. Rarely cared about it when it did cross my mind. It took everything I had in me to not reach out to her.

My heart was in my throat. She was well. She knew me. She called my fortress her home. I wanted to touch her. (I did not deserve to.) I wanted to smile; I could not.

Yes. I longed to shout from the rooftops, and sing from his tallest towers. (What was wrong with me? No one had ever made me feel like I was soaring like this.) Yes. The Auditor is home. 

She smiled, and I knew she understood.

While Anna healed, there was much work to do. I juggled so many things, I rarely had any downtime. Yet, I visited her every chance I got. (I was there for every assessment as well, and watched over her healing carefully.) She stayed in Medical for a long time; for weeks she could not see at all, both eyes remained covered after her surgeries. Whenever I sat with her, she would ask me questions about what happened, sometimes asking the same question again and again. I did not mind; I walked her through whatever she wanted to know, as often as she asked.

Sometimes we sat in silence, and I would watch her. She was often sleepy, but disliked sleeping when I visited. It was a shock when I realized I adored the way her mouth twisted when she got grumpy about it.

"Sir," she said. "I am serious about it."

"Auditor, all is well. Sleep if you need to."

"If I fall asleep, you'll go back to work."

She had a point. I had left several other occasions when I had not wanted to disturb her.

I scoffed. "I will have one of the minions bring me a tablet. I'll work here while you sleep."

"Will you stay until I wake up?"

Anna's medications had been reduced somewhat, and yet I was not certain she would say such things otherwise. I hesitated. Her mouth twisted into that grumpy little grimace and I caved. No one was there to see me do so. "Yes, Anna. I'll be here when you wake."

She smiled blindly at me. I chittered quietly. (Working there was slower than my usual furious pace. I might have been glancing at her way too often.)

After one of her eyes was at last uncovered, she asked me about her retrieval. I went still, feeling more like a rabbit about to be caught out in a trap than I had since I was a child. I was furiously relieved I could not blush. I felt...almost embarrassed about my reaction. I had not deleted the security footage from that day that showed me monologuing every single thing that happened, even the parts I did not intend to say out loud, but I did not then offer to show them to her. I tried for something delicate and in-between those things as I described what I had said and done. It was a relief that she looked impressed.

She bit her lip and lifted a hand out to me. "That was sweet of you," she said. "To go through so much trouble for me."

I stared at her, feeling very seen and wondering if she had (finally) figured out how important she was to me. "Auditor," I said, attempting to put distance between us, though my voice betrayed me with its own new warmth for her.

"Sir," she said.

Her hand remained lifted to me.

I took it. She squeezed my hand, and we sat in silence, neither of us willing to break open whatever...this...was with words that could not capture the way something within me soared.

After that, as she continued to heal, I found more and more reasons to touch her. The more time we spent around each other, the more I could not refrain from finding some reason to reach for her.

I was glad that she seemed to regard these slight touches favorably, despite the fact we did not speak about it.

Months passed. Eventually, I cleared her to work with Vesper and learn to use her new kinds of vision.

When I at last cleared her for work, I decided to give her a celebration. I knew she liked that kind of thing, having watched security footage past celebrations that she had thrown for her successes. Heart thrumming in my chest, my body tingling where every small setae stood on end and vibrated. I felt her watching me, but I did not think that she could yet discern changes in my body (I did not think that she had understood yet that it was a body she watched and not armor like everyone else believed). Shoving thoughts of myself out of my head, I said, "Choose a movie you'd like to watch, to celebrate your return to work. We can use the big auditorium, with the I-Max screen."

She looked over at me in surprise. "Do you intend to watch a movie with me?"

I inclined my head and was as honest as I dared. "I find myself wishing to celebrate."

I sent out a memo to those parts of the company that would care most about The Auditor's return to work, and offered them the chance to share the theater. There was a great turn out, as only she deserved. Anna and I sat in my private box, with Keller as well (I found myself wanting to wrap her in extra security, even as I challenged her with my most important project.)

She laughed with Keller, when he said something sarcastic about one of the characters. When I voiced my own (negative) opinion about the skill of the special effects mixed with the overwrought actors, she shrieked and threw popcorn at me. Then she paused, as if she feared how I would react. I delicately picked the popcorn off my shoulder and flicked it back at her. She laughed as she tried to catch it in her mouth. I flicked another kernel at her and she toppled off the chair when she tried again.

She waved away Keller's help, laughing at herself as she climbed back into her chair. She massaged her leg, and shrugged at us. "I'm fine, really, forget that happened."

I inclined my head, knowing I'd certainly find out if her balance issues had grown worse, and then gestured to the movie none of us had been paying attention to. "Well, explain it then, why do you like this movie so much Anna?"

She grinned and launched into a detailed analysis of the horror genre. I watched her more than I watched the screen. Keller said nothing, though I could tell he noticed. Anna did not seem to. She kept talking about the movie, and where it sat on the spectrum that was horror. I watched her emotions play out across her features, something bubbling inside my chest.

When she finished, she turned to me, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, Sir. I got a little carried away."

Having my image to think of (I should not find her so compelling if I was as cold blooded as my minions assumed) I did not urge her to continue, that I very much wanted to know why this series of horror films were so important to the genre. I gave a little shrug. "You are passionate about your interests," I said with the clear calm I always spoke in, none of that distressing warmth that kept infecting me around her. "That is how I found you. It is not surprising that you can..." I very carefully searched for anything other than 'gush' as that was not something I felt The Auditor wanted to be known for. "...speak with extravagant detail on topics of interest."

Again she smiled at me, that smile of warmth and appreciation and of Home. I chittered quietly to myself. Anna was home, and I was with her, and we were where we belonged. She would return to active duty, and I would be careful with her. I would keep her safe, secure, near to hand. (She was mine; The Auditor had not left, though I had cost her so much already.) When the movie ended, I asked her if she wanted to stay for the next one, and she did. (We did).

 Somewhere around the middle of the second movie, Anna realized she did still need breaks, so she would turn from the screen and talk to one of us. I watched Anna and Keller laugh together and was not jealous of her ease with him. I did not want ease. (Did I want fear? I was not certain.) But then she would turn to me, arching a brow or saying Sir? and I would snap to attention.

By the fourth installment, Keller had gone. It was only Anna and I in my box, watching the movie from the best vantage point in the room (it had been calculated by the best computers when this room was designed). She was watching me instead of the screen.

"I am...thank you for suggesting this. It has been very good."

"Yes," my words deserted me. "Good. That's good."

"I'm going to get more popcorn," she grinned at me. "Be right back."

I watched her walk away, head high, cane in hand. My heart was in my throat, I was soaring again, flying high above this night. It was unlike anything I had done, and I could not—what should I do? How could I—

What did it mean? I was feeling nearly dizzy, nearly like throwing up, and like laughing hysterically, and like I wanted to show off for her, to show her I was the best, the strongest, the one who would win. I wanted her to know I would never let her come to harm again. I wanted her to know that I was ready to vibrate right out of my body with—Something I could not name, exactly. I wanted her close by, I wanted her to know she was important to me. I wanted her beautiful, lighting thoughts to surround me entirely.

Anna came back with popcorn. The Auditor paused in the doorway of the box, and smiled at me slightly. "What are you thinking about, Sir?"

I started to say 'you' and changed it at the last moment, stumbling on the initial sounds, but managing a coherent, "We make a—we work well together, Auditor." (I had an Inner Circle, not a team, never a Team again.)

She understood me, I could see it in her eyes. She munched on her popcorn, and then gestured to the movie. "My favorite thing about this series is that the characters who survive; they manage to do it despite the impossible, terrifying, odds stacked against them. They should not survive horror after horror that they are faced with, and yet they stand up over and over again, until they come out the other side." She chuckled softly. "Well, that and the fact that the monsters can be fought. That is also very important."

I could not find the words that would express how deeply I felt that, how deeply I understood that desire. I glanced at the screen, where one of the monsters was nothing but a shadow on the wall, teasing its existential terror. Perhaps I would watch these terrible movies again and again, until I could see them as she did. That did not seem like a wasteful use of time.

I reached out to her, wrapping a hand softly around her throat, caressing her heartbeat in my fingertips, and her voice in my palm. She watched me with that unflinching gaze that saw more than ever before. We both held ourselves still, unable to look away.

"Should all monster's be fought?" I asked.

She did not laugh, did not smirk, but remained entirely serious. "Sometimes the only way to defeat a monster is to become something bigger, scarier, or—most of all—much more dangerous. Sometimes its brute strength that can defeat a terror, but sometimes it's the slow acting venom that fills a heart."

I pressed a thumb underneath her jaw. "I see."

Someone screamed in the movie, and none of the stragglers left in the theater paid any attention to us. The movie went dark, as the screamer died (or was locked away perhaps?) and in that moment of darkness, Anna pushed against my hand, dragging me with her, to press a kiss to my cheek.

"I am glad you understand, Sir."