Chapter Text
It happens without warning.
One moment Vox is mid meeting, posture relaxed in his chair, fingers steepled the way they always are when he is supposed to be listening. Next, something inside him lurches. Not pain. Not dizziness. Awareness. Sudden and sharp, like a camera snapping into focus after being smeared with grease.
What the fuck is this.
The thought arrives fully formed, intrusive in a way that feels illegal. His surroundings do not dissolve. That would be easier. The room stays exactly as it is. Velvet upholstery. Neon reflections crawling lazily along the edges of glass. A voice droned somewhere to his left. A girl perched opposite him, boot hooked casually over the arm of her chair, eyes bright and predatory.
Where am I?
The question echoes, hollow and wrong. He doesn't know the room. He doesn’t know the building. Yet, he knows the city. Pride. His city. And yet the knowledge sits on top of something else, something colder. A sense that he has woken up halfway through a sentence he does not remember starting.
His gaze drifts downward before he can stop it.
On the table in front of him are schematics. Not media grids. Not surveillance layouts. Not anything sane. They are layered with celestial architecture, lines too precise, too reverent. Sigils are mapped beside broadcast towers, inked with obsessive care. Arrows climb upward, piercing the firmament, pointing into places no sinner is meant to touch.
Plans to rule Heaven.
The words do not come from anyone else. They bloom in his mind on their own, slow and sickening, like remembering something you wish you hadn’t lived through.
He stares.
His chest tightens. His thoughts stutter, snagging on the edges of the designs. He understands them instantly, which makes it worse. The logic is flawless in theory. The strategy is airtight in assumption. It is beautiful in the way a guillotine is beautiful. Yet, it is ultimately extremely stupid.
So, he laughs.
It cuts out of him sharp and loud, wrong in the sterile air, slicing straight through Valentino’s ongoing monologue like a blade. “That’s fucking insane.”
The room stills.
The girl's brow lifts, more amused than offended. She looks at him like she’s waiting for a punchline. The moth turns slowly, irritation coiling beneath silk and teeth. “What.”
Vox gestures vaguely at the table, at the impossible diagrams spread out like blueprints for a god complex that has finally tipped over into clinical delusion. “This,” he says, incredulous now, the laughter already turning sour. “All of this. Ruling Heaven? That’s not ambition, that’s a psych eval.”
The man across from him snorts, irritation curling sharp and familiar. “Oh don’t start pretending this isn’t your baby.”
The woman beside him leans forward, elbows braced on her knees, eyes sharp and engaged. “You pitched it,” she says. “Every detail. We’re just executing.”
The words hit wrong.
Pitched it.
Every detail.
Something inside Vox recoils violently. Not fear. Recognition. The kind that makes your stomach drop when you hear a recording of your own voice saying something you don’t remember thinking. He looks back down at the notes, at the sprawling madness laid out in ink and intent.
The handwriting is his.
That much is undeniable. The slant. The pressure points. The shorthand symbols he has been using since the eighties without ever thinking about them. The phrasing is his. The logic is his. Too clean. Too elegant. Too cruel.
And yet.
His pulse spikes. His vision fuzzes at the edges, static crawling faintly along his screen. He looks up again, searching for something solid. Something familiar. Something that tells him he is still standing in his own life.
The man is… fucking Valentino..? That at least anchors. A known quantity. Someone he recognizes in the way you recognize a threat you have always kept at arm’s length.
The woman.
Vox stares at her properly for the first time.
Not a glance. Not a passing assessment. A real look.
And nothing clicks.
No memory. No context. No emotional residue. She looks at him with the ease of someone who knows him well, who has history with him, who expects him to remember her. His systems scrape desperately for a file, a tag, anything to tell him who she is.
There is nothing.
Cold unease slides down his spine.
Because the plans are his. The handwriting is his. The voice in his head that understands every step of this madness is his.
But the woman sitting across from him might as well be a stranger wearing familiarity like a costume.
And that is when the horror sharpens into something unbearable.
Because if he doesn’t recognize her. If he doesn’t remember pitching this. If the only thing grounding him is a man he barely tolerated decades ago.
Then someone else has been living in the space where his memories should be.
Who the fuck are you.
The thought is cold and panicked and absolutely silent.
“No,” Vox says suddenly, louder than he intends, the word tearing out of him raw and uncontrolled. “No way would I greenlight this.”
The room reacts at once. The man across from him stiffens, irritation flaring sharp and immediate. The woman’s smile tightens, confusion flashing across her face for the briefest moment before it hardens into annoyance.
Vox barely registers either of them.
His head is roaring now, a low relentless noise that drowns out the room. The table in front of him feels too solid, too real, like something anchoring him to a reality he does not recognize. The air presses in, thick and heavy, making it hard to draw a full breath. It feels like waking up in the middle of a play, lights blinding, lines already spoken, and realizing everyone else knows exactly what comes next while you are still trying to remember your own name. Like standing over a crime scene and seeing your fingerprints everywhere without any memory of ever being there.
He knows this plan. That is the worst part.
He understands every step of it instinctively. The leverage points. The escalation. The way the whole thing builds with cruel, elegant inevitability. His mind slots the pieces together without effort, like a machine doing what it was built to do.
But it does not feel like a choice he made.
It feels like proof.
A cold, creeping panic starts to wind its way through him, slow and insidious, threading between his thoughts. What the fuck is going on. He keeps the words locked behind his teeth, forces his posture to stay upright, his expression to stay sharp, because showing fear here would be catastrophic. Still, his gaze betrays him, flicking back to the woman across the table, searching her face for anything at all. Recognition. Memory. Even dislike would be something.
There is nothing.
She looks at him like someone who knows him well. Like someone who has argued with him, planned with him, trusted him. And he has nothing to give back. No echo. No emotional residue. Just a blank, terrifying absence.
The realization settles heavy in his chest.
Then the question is no longer why they believe this is his doing.
It is how long someone else has been speaking with his voice, making decisions with his hands, shaping the world in his name while he was nowhere to be found.
The man across from him shifts again.
His expression changes.
Not confusion. Not surprise.
Annoyance.
And Vox, still smiling on the surface, still playing the part everyone expects, feels fear coil tight and vicious inside him, because whatever is happening here did not start today, and he has no idea how deep it goes.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he drawls, irritation slipping through the silk of his voice. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Vox’s fingers curl hard against the armrest, nails biting just enough to anchor him. “Whats worse.”
Valentino flicks his wrist, smoke trailing lazily through the air. “Your obsession with the radio demon. Obviously.”
The name hits like a struck bell.
Something in Vox’s chest locks up so fast it almost hurts. His screen flickers once, a brief involuntary ripple of static he cannot stop. For a fraction of a second there is a sensation with no edges. Warmth. Noise. Laughter that cut and soothed at the same time. Familiar without context, like hearing a song you loved once but cannot place.
Then it is gone.
Ripped away so abruptly it leaves nothing behind but a hollow absence that echoes.
Vox straightens immediately, spine snapping into alignment like a reflex drilled into him decades ago. “No,” he says, sharp and final. “We’re not friends. Not anymore. Why would i do anything for him?”
Valentino watches him now, properly. Smoke curls between his fingers as his eyes narrow, assessing rather than accusing. “Funny,” he says slowly. “Because you’ve been… different since you crossed paths again. You've always been all about his approval, the only reason you'd change your mind on this idea is if hes gotten into your head.”
Crossed paths again.
Vox’s mind stumbles over the phrase.
Again implies a before and an after. A return. And that makes no sense. After the argument, after the rejection that burned hot and humiliating and final, Vox had built his life around absence. He had learned which districts to avoid, which frequencies to mute, which doors never to open. He had lived carefully, deliberately, never letting himself drift too close to that name again.
He had not crossed paths.
So where did Alastor go?
What does Valentino mean since he got back?
Vox does not ask. He cannot. The panic curls tighter inside him, sharp and breath-stealing, but his face does not change. His smile snaps into place on instinct, wide and polished and dangerous, a mask he does not remember forging but knows exactly how to wear. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I,” Valentino replies mildly. “Or did he get inside your head and rattle something loose.”
The woman across the table does not interrupt. She never does when things turn sharp. She watches Vox closely, like she is waiting to see which way he will fracture.
Vox holds Valentino’s gaze, nodding at the right moments, letting the script carry him where it seems to expect him to go. Inside, his thoughts are spiraling, trying to reconcile a life built on avoidance with the suggestion that the one person he never allowed back in has somehow been near him again.
So he does what he has apparently done for years. He follows the shape of the conversation. He says what feels correct. He lets the persona answer for him while he scrambles silently beneath it, terrified. The room feels too close. The lights burn too bright, humming faintly at a pitch that makes his thoughts itch. The power beneath the floorboards roars now, suddenly unbearable, like standing on top of a live wire. His own thoughts feel staged. Artificial. Like actors hitting marks he never set.
Plans to rule Heaven. What the fuck kind of plan is this.
He looks back down at the table.
For a heartbeat, true panic flares. He cannot remember deciding any of this. Cannot remember wanting it. The designs loom up at him like evidence, like a crime scene meticulously prepared by his own hands.
The idea wears his face.
What did I miss? What am i missing?
The question coils tight around his core, cold and suffocating. He does not voice it. He cannot. Whatever this gap is, whatever has opened up inside him, he knows instinctively that showing it would be fatal.
Valentino does not raise his voice.
“You don’t get to play confused,” Valentino says, tone flat, sharp underneath. “You don’t get to act like this is new. We’ve built everything around you.”
He knows Valentino. He is certain of that. Knows him in the way you know a dangerous name that circulates through Hell. In passing. In rumor. In cautionary tales. The last time Vox remembers being himself, Valentino was a presence on the periphery. Loud. Flashy. Someone you kept an eye on, not someone you built an empire with.
Valentino talks like they have history. Shared victories. Shared decisions. Vox hears it in the certainty of his tone, the familiarity he does not bother to disguise. But nothing in the life Vox last remembered living would have led to this. He always stayed away from Valentino, Mostly because Alastor hated him, but also because his love for TV would never let him stoop so low.
All this familiarity is making his head spin, why do they know him so well. Or at least know a version of him.
Because if Valentino thinks they are this entangled, if she looks at him like she knows him, if this room expects him to remember years he cannot access, then the problem is not that he forgot. Its that this life is not one hes lived.
Vox keeps smiling.
Inside, the horror deepens, slow and relentless.
“You don’t get to fake morality halfway through the endgame,” Valentino says, his smile stretched thin, eyes sharp as cut glass. “This is what we agreed to. This is the plan were sticking to.”
The woman is already on her feet. Her heel comes down once, hard, the crack of it snapping through the room like a signal flare. “You don’t pitch godhood, rally everyone for months, then turn around and act like we’re insane for following you,” she says. “Either you’re in, or you’re out.”
Vox looks at them.
Really looks.
Valentino, coiled and poisonous, waiting for Vox to bare his teeth and strike. The doll, incandescent with fury, daring him to blink, to falter, to admit weakness. The room itself hums, power thrumming beneath the floorboards, heavy with expectation and threat.
He knows how this is meant to go.
He knows the script. He is supposed to flare, to dominate, to remind them who built the tower they are standing in, whose signal holds this place together. He is supposed to roar and they are supposed to fall in line.
Instead, there is nothing.
No heat. No rage. No pleasure in the power poised at his fingertips. Just a vast, echoing distance, like shouting into an empty studio and hearing only the hollow return of his own voice.
“Okay,” he says.
The word lands wrong.
Both of them freeze.
“Okay?” she repeats, incredulous, like she misheard him.
Vox shrugs. The movement feels oddly loose, unanchored, as if his body is acting on a decision his mind only just agreed to. “Then I’ll fuck off.”
Valentino’s smile cracks, disbelief bleeding through the silk. “You’re joking.”
Vox is already standing.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor. He does not look at either of them again. They start shouting, voices overlapping, sharp with threats and fury. Words like betrayal. Ingrate. Waste of time. He registers the sounds without meaning, like static bleeding through a dead channel.
He walks past the table.
Past the plans that wear his handwriting like a stolen skin. Past the blueprints of an empire he does not remember wanting. Past the future someone else decided he would be responsible for.
His hand closes around the door handle.
For a split second, doubt flickers. Not about the consequences. About the choice itself. Somewhere deep inside him, something tries to reassert itself. A pull. A pressure. A whisper that this is easier. That lying would be simpler. That following the path laid out for him would hurt less than tearing himself free.
Vox ignores it.
Because if someone designed him to stand here and say yes, then this is the only answer that is his.
The door shuts behind him with a soft click.
The hallway outside feels wrong.
Too wide. Too clean. The lighting is different than it should be, cooler, brighter, refracting off surfaces that gleam in ways he does not recognize. Vox stops walking.
He breathes.
The sensation is strange. He does not remember deciding to do it.
Everything looks… upgraded.
“What the fuck,” he murmurs.
He turns slowly, taking it in. Screens embedded seamlessly into walls. Interfaces responding to proximity rather than touch. The air itself hums with data, layered and alive, dense in a way that makes his head ache faintly. He feels like someone who went to sleep in one century and woke up in another without being warned.
Think.
The command cuts through the fog.
Think.
He reaches inward, instinctively, the way he always has. Past the broadcast layer. Past the surface programs. He searches for memory, for a timeline he can grab onto.
The last thing that feels solid is a fracture.
Alastor.
The fallout. The distance. The years after, quiet and sharp-edged, defined by stubborn isolation and spite-fueled rebuilding. He remembers the late eighties. The aesthetic. The tech ceiling. The world as it was then.
1989
The date lodges in his mind with terrifying clarity.
“What,” Vox whispers, voice barely audible in the empty corridor, “has happened since.”
He does not panic. Panic would require certainty. This is worse. This is standing in the aftermath of something enormous and realizing you slept through the explosion.
He reaches into his systems.
The motion is reflexive, muscle memory older than fear. His consciousness unfolds into signal space, interfaces blooming open around him like instinctive limbs. He expects resistance. Confusion. Corruption.
Instead, the connection is flawless.
He is online.
Data floods in.
The sheer volume makes his head tilt back slightly, breath catching as information slams into him from every direction. Bandwidth he does not remember building. Protocols he does not remember authorizing. Entire frameworks of communication that feel intimate and alien at the same time.
And the internet.
This is not what he remembers.
It is faster. Denser. Meaner. Beautiful in a way that makes his chest tighten. Social structures layered on algorithms layered on attention economies so refined they border on predatory art. He scrolls without moving his hands, absorbing decades of evolution in seconds.
“Oh,” he breathes, awe bleeding into horror. “Wow.”
Everything is so modern.
He understands it instantly. Of course he does. This is his domain, just grown feral in his absence. But understanding it does not answer the real question burning beneath his processing stack.
If this is the world now, if this is what he built, refined, perfected…
Why does it all feel like he just walked into someone else’s life?
He does not mean to look.
It happens by accident, the way all the worst discoveries do. A reflective surface catches his peripheral vision as he passes, a polished panel set into the corridor wall. He slows, then stops.
And stares.
The figure looking back at him is… wrong.
Taller than he remembers. Sharper. Built like a statement rather than a man. His head is no longer a CRT at all but a modern looking screen, glass smooth and faintly glowing, edges too clean, too deliberate. The image it displays is controlled, curated, unmistakably powerful.
His style is immaculate. Tailored. Expensive in a way that screams intention.
“I miss the sweater vest” Vox mutters, faintly offended despite everything.
The joke dies quickly.
Because once he is looking, he cannot stop.
His gaze drags upward, then tilts, searching angles the mirror does not want to give him. He leans closer, squinting at the seam where the screen meets what should be flesh. There is a faint flicker there, barely visible. A spark. Then another.
Vox freezes.
“That’s not…” His voice trails off.
He shifts again, closer still, focus narrowing with surgical precision. Beneath the screen, recessed just enough to hide from a casual glance, something metallic glints. Not a component. Not infrastructure. It does not belong to him.
A chip.
Small. Embedded. Wired into him with obscene intimacy.
His systems recoil the second he acknowledges it, error warnings flaring too late, like guards realizing the door was already open. The chip hums faintly, almost apologetic, and something inside Vox goes cold.
“Oh,” he whispers.
Memory gaps. Years. Decades. The sensation of waking up inside decisions he does not remember making. Plans he does not recall wanting. Faces that mean nothing to him but look at him like they know him intimately.
Has someone been using his body?
The thought lands heavy and horrifying, not as paranoia but as sudden, awful clarity. His autonomy. His voice. His hands. Thirty years of movement and influence and choice filtered through something else.
“Jesus,” Vox breathes.
His reflection stares back, calm and confident and completely complicit.
That would explain it.
The girl in the boardroom. The one who looked at him like familiarity was a given. He could not even remember her name. And Valentino. Partnered with a pimp. Since when. Since ever, apparently. Since long enough for it to be normal.
Long enough for Vox to forget himself.
His hands curl slowly into fists, knuckles tight. Anger blooms, but it is distant, secondary to the deeper terror curling beneath it. This is not possession in the dramatic sense. No missing time marked by blackouts and blood. This is worse.
This is continuity without consent.
Someone did not erase him.
They edited him.
Vox straightens, tearing his gaze away from the mirror. His pulse hums through the systems in his body, loud and furious now. The world around him feels hostile in a new way, every screen and wire suddenly suspect.
“Okay,” he says softly, to no one at all.
If this thing is the reason he does not remember the last thirty years, if someone has been riding his body like a broadcast signal, then there is only one thing that matters.
Finding out who put it there. Finding out why they chose him.
And deciding what to do once he does.
Vox does not return to the tower.
The thought of it makes his screen prickle with static. Too many eyes. Too much history he does not remember earning. He needs someone old. Someone who existed before the noise calcified into whatever this is now.
So he heads for Carmilla’s district.
The transition alone is jarring. Pride’s skyline shifts as he moves, neon thinning into something sharper, older. Steel and stone instead of glass and light. Power here is not broadcast. It is held. Worn. Respected or feared in equal measure.
She must still be here, Vox thinks. She was powerful when he was still climbing. Not flashy. Not loud. Enduring.
He is not prepared for how quickly she proves him right.
Carmilla does not greet him.
She levels a blade at his throat the instant he steps into her space, steel close enough that he can feel the intent behind it. Her eyes are hard, posture coiled, every inch of her radiating the kind of pressure that only comes from someone who knows exactly how dangerous they are.
“The Vees are not welcome here,” she says coldly.
Vox blinks.
“What,” he says, genuinely baffled.
Her lip curls. “You heard me.”
“I’ve always respected you,” Vox says, the words spilling out before he can stop them. “I still do. I wouldn’t bring …Vee..? business into your-”
“You are Vee business,” Carmilla snaps. “Or have you forgotten what you represent now.”
Now.
The word hits wrong, like a mistranslation. Vox lowers his hands slowly, palms open, an old placating gesture he has not consciously used in decades but which comes back to him like muscle memory.
“I need help.” he says carefully.
She does not lower the blade.
But she looks at him properly.
Not at the screen. Not at the silhouette or the reputation. At him. Whatever she sees there makes something in her expression shift, just slightly. Not trust. But pause.
“…Explain,” she says.
Vox exhales. He glances down, then back up at her, clearly at a loss. “The Vees?” he repeats, incredulous. “I don’t even know what that means.”
Her eyes narrow dangerously. “Don’t insult me.”
“I’m not,” Vox says quickly. “I genuinely don’t- hold on.”
Without thinking, he reaches inward.
It is instinctual. Reflex. The same way someone might check the time or their pulse. His systems bloom open, seamless and intimate, and he connects.
The internet floods in.
Carmilla watches him closely as his posture changes, attention turning inward, eyes unfocused for a split second. Data scrolls faster than thought. Names. Headlines. Rumors. Footage. Articles layered with opinion and fear and hate.
The Vees.
Vox’s breath catches.
“Oh,” he murmurs.
There he is. Everywhere. Broadcasts. Empires. Violence packaged as entertainment. Power plays. Public scandals. Private atrocities whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. Valentino. Velvette. The three of them spoken in the same breath like a curse.
He scrolls faster.
Damage reports. Bodies. Territories burned. People ruined for sport or leverage. His name attached to things that make something twist low and sick in his chest.
“…Jesus,” Vox whispers.
He disconnects abruptly, the noise cutting off like a severed wire. He looks up at Carmilla, horror written plain across his face.
“That’s the group I was in, A group i formed.” he says quietly.
Her blade does not waver.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Vox continues, voice tight. “I remember Valentino in passing. A problem. A risk. Not a partner. Not someone i would tie my future to. I don’t recognize the girl at all. And apparently,” he swallows, “apparently I helped build this.”
He laughs once, brittle and broken. “How much damage do you have to do to make your name this radioactive. I never wanted an empire like this.”
Carmilla studies him in silence.
“I don’t know what happened with me,” Vox says, softer now. “Or what I did while I wasn’t… here. But I know this isn’t right. I know I didn’t choose it. And if you think I’d walk into your district proudly wearing that label, then you don’t know me as well as whoever turned me into this apparently did.”
The air stretches between them.
Finally, Carmilla lowers the blade. Not fully. Just enough to signal that, for now, he is not an immediate threat.
“You’ve caused a lot of pain,” she says flatly.
Vox nods. He does not argue. He does not deflect. “I know. I just found out.”
Her eyes linger on him, searching for arrogance, for denial, for the familiar stench of justification. She finds none.
Instead, she finds confusion. Horror. And something else beneath it. Grief.
Vox lowers his hands slowly, palms open, a gesture he has not used in decades but which comes back to him like muscle memory. “Something’s wrong,” he says. “And I think you can see it.”
She does not lower the blade. But she looks at him properly now.
Really looks.
Not the screen. Not the silhouette. Him.
Whatever she sees makes her pause.
He explains his realisation further. Not theatrically. Not cleverly. Just plainly. He tells her he does not remember the last thirty years. That the world feels like it skipped ahead without asking him. That he found something in his body that does not belong to him. That the Vees are planning to take over Heaven and he does not remember ever wanting that, let alone orchestrating it.
He reaches up, fingers steady despite everything, and removes the chip.
The act hurts more than he expects. Not physically. Existentially. Like pulling a splinter out of his sense of self.
He places it in her hand.
Carmilla studies it in silence, rotating it between gloved fingers, eyes narrowing as she inspects the craftsmanship. Her expression shifts from skepticism to something more guarded. More serious.
“This isn’t standard,” she murmurs. “Not demonic. Not celestial either. It’s… hybrid.”
Vox exhales shakily. “So I’m not insane.”
“No,” she says. “You’re.. You've been compromised. Messed with from a distance for years.”
She looks up at him again and this time there is no hostility in her gaze. Only calculation. Curiosity.
And something like recognition.
Only then does Vox realize what he has done without noticing.
The suit coat is gone. At some point between leaving the tower and standing here, he shed it. He is down to his striped vest now, sleeves rolled, collar loosened. Comfortable. Old habits creeping back in where newer ones feel wrong.
He rocks faintly on his heels when he thinks. Taps two fingers against his side when he waits. The gestures are small, unconscious.
Carmilla notices all of it.
“…You’re exactly the same,” she says slowly. “As you were.”
Vox laughs under his breath, brittle. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“It’s like watching a ghost walk back into Hell,” she continues. “You talk the same. You move the same. Even your tells haven’t changed.”
Her grip tightens around the chip.
“So someone’s been wearing you,” Carmilla says, voice low and dangerous now, “Not bothering to change your habits, just your mind. Your ideals.”
Vox swallows.
“So you believe me.”
She nods once. Decisive. “I do.”
Relief crashes into him so hard his knees almost buckle. He did not realize how much he needed someone else to say it. To anchor him. How much he needed a face he knows to say that they understand.
Carmilla turns away, gesturing for him to follow. “Then you’re not leaving this district alone. And you’re not going back to those parasites.”
“Good,” Vox says quietly. “Because I don’t think I could fake being whatever they turned me into much longer.”
As he steps deeper into her domain, the weight of the future presses in. Questions stack on questions. Who did this? Why him. Why now?
It feels, terrifyingly and comfortingly, like stepping back in time.
Vox hesitates at the threshold of the room Carmilla has led him into. It is quieter here. Not silent, but controlled. The kind of space that has never needed to shout to be obeyed. He exhales slowly, the sound almost a relief.
“I’ve left the Vees,” he says at last.
The words feel strange in his mouth, like he is testing a language he once knew and forgot. He glances at her, brow faintly furrowed. “I don’t even remember partnering with them. I don’t know when it happened. Or why.” A pause. “I don’t know how long I’ve been… theirs. Im fucking scared. I dont know anything and that is horrible.”
Carmilla studies him, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“I need somewhere to stay,” Vox continues, more quietly now. “And I need people I can trust. Because whatever this is,” he gestures vaguely, indicating the chip she now holds, the missing decades, the plans he never chose, “it’s bigger than me. Bigger than the Vees. Bigger than everything.”
She does not answer immediately. She turns the chip over once more in her palm, then closes her fingers around it decisively.
“You can stay here tonight,” Carmilla says. “Tomorrow, I’ll reach out to a few old names. The kind who don’t owe the Vees anything. If someone’s been using you as a long-term asset, we’ll need more eyes on this than just mine.”
Vox’s shoulders loosen for the first time since he woke up.
“…Thank you,” he says.
The words come out softer than he intends. He does not say them lightly. Gratitude has always been a calculated thing for him. A transaction. This is not that.
He bows.
It is not deep or theatrical, just a respectful incline, old-fashioned and sincere. When he straightens, he offers her a small smile. Not the sharp broadcast grin. Not the one designed to disarm or deceive.
Just a quiet one.
One without lies hidden behind it.
Carmilla holds his gaze for a moment longer, something unreadable passing through her expression, then nods once. “Get some rest, Vox. Whatever’s been steering you for the last thirty years doesn’t get to tonight.”
She turns to leave.
Vox exhales slowly, the breath he has been holding finally slipping free. For the first time since the room with the schematics, since the laughter that curdled in his throat, the world stops pressing in quite so hard.
Carmilla pauses at the doorway.
“There is something else,” she says, not looking back at him at first. When she does turn, her eyes are sharp, thoughtful. “We only knew each other in passing, you and I. Back then. When you were… close with him.”
Vox stills.
“I remember your rise,” she continues. “I remember expecting brilliance. Precision. What I saw instead was an empire that felt hollow. Loud. Cruel in ways that lacked intention.” Her jaw tightens. “The others lacked discipline. Lacked maturity. They acted like children handed weapons.”
She shakes her head once, quietly incredulous. “I am shocked no one questioned it. No one asked how you went from what you were to what you became. How this has managed to fall under the radar.”
Her gaze pins him in place now. “Not even your closest friend noticed a change in you.”
The words land carefully, but they still hit.
“You’ve been enemies for years,” Carmilla adds. “Openly. Viciously.”
Vox blinks.
“Enemies,” he repeats, faintly.
“Yes.”
He swallows. His voice, when it comes, is low and confused. “I don’t remember that.”
Carmilla watches him closely as he speaks, as if measuring the truth of it in his posture rather than his words.
“The last thing I remember,” Vox says slowly, “is that we fell out. Badly.” His fingers curl together, restless. “After that, I avoided him. I learned which places not to be. Which hours not to exist in. I hid in corners of my own life just to make sure I’d never cross paths with him again.”
He lets out a short, disbelieving breath. “Enemies implies intention. Effort. I didn’t have that in me. I just… disappeared.”
Silence stretches between them.
Carmilla’s expression hardens, not with anger, but with something colder. Understanding edged with unease. “Then someone else carried that feud forward,” she says. “In your name.”
Vox looks down at his hands.
The thought settles heavy and sickening in his chest. Years of hatred he never chose. A rivalry he never fed. Damage done while he was busy hiding, while he believed absence was enough to keep him safe.
“I loved him,” Vox says quietly, the admission slipping out before he can stop it. There is no drama in it. Just fact. “And when that went wrong, I built my life around never having to feel it again.”
Carmilla does not interrupt.
“If we were enemies,” he continues, softer now, “then I know now, none of my choices were mine. Because i loved him too much to fake hatred.”
She nods once. Firm. Decisive. “Well the people or person who did this didn't know you well enough either.”
The weight of it hangs there, awful and clarifying all at once.
Carmilla turns away again, this time without pausing. “Rest,” she repeats. “Tomorrow we start figuring out who decided your life for you.”
Vox is left alone in the quiet. His mind crazed with hurt. It was a feeling to immense to name that no one could tell he changed, he thought he had people who would notice. Finding out no one even questioned it hurt more than words could name. Tomorrow, he thinks, tomorrow will bring a new future one that i own.