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03 – Top Secret
Being top secret was weird. It was like being back in her old life in certain ways – the life where she had no reason to go outside unless there was something she couldn’t get delivered through an app. Outside had been a sometimes thing, and that had been fine. Outside was loud, noisy, overwhelming, and full of people. But not having the choice seemed really limiting. Crawford had allowed certain spaces to be added beyond the walls of her suite and office, like Jane’s estate, but visiting there was still strange, still too much like her bio-family, even if it did come with the beyond wonderful chance to keep…
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49 – Doubts and Answers
‘I like you,’ Mags said. Curt ran the sentence through his head a few times, then propped himself on an arm to look over at the still-naked Mags. ‘Obviously,’ he said. ‘You don’t kick me out as soon as we’re done. I know that’s a rare privilege.’ She required a pillow, slipped it behind herself, tossed a towel aside, retrieved her phone and stared at it for a moment before looking back to him. ‘You don’t think the afterglow is sacred. I hate when people insist on silence after fucking. If you’re in love, it’s different, but when it’s just sex, I don’t need some stupid countdown…
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48 – Onward
Stef slid into her chair and allowed herself to smile at Leaf. Things would hurt. Maybe always hurt. But- But there was no reason she couldn’t enjoy the cuteness of a child right in front of her. ‘All right?’ Jane asked. Ryan saved her from questions about the long bathroom break by making a deadpan comment that she’d been defending the honour of a fictional character. Jane had simply pointed out that Kay was still missing, then stopped Leaf from choking on an orange wedge. ‘Any idea who your docent is going to be?’ Alejandro asked as he sat back in his seat but declined…
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47 – Ready to Start
Stef stared at the three-foot-tall crystal. On her first day as a recruit, she’d had no baseline for what was and wasn’t normal within the Agency, so it hadn’t seemed out of place. Now, with the Venn diagram of magic and tech being a near-perfect circle, it seemed to stick out like a sore thumb. Everything about the Agency was…simple. Streamlined. Simple commands and defined parameters. The crystal didn’t fit into that worldview. ‘Andrea?’ Andrea raised her head from the preparations she was making at her computer. ‘Mm?’ ‘I-’ There was a straightforward way to test the theory. She folded her hands…
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46 – Decisions
With ten minutes until Crawford was due to arrive, Ryan left, giving her one last “good luck”. They had tidied the office area, making everything as presentable as possible. Ryan had assured her she looked fine – and a quick trip to the bathroom mirror backed up his words, showing her that she was probably as presentable as was possible. Stef looked at the clock. Five minutes to go. She opened the requiring app and set up a carafe of water with a few glasses – there was no knowing if Crawford was going to bring company. It wasn’t what she’d been told to expect, but it…
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45 – Prim and Proper
Scan after scan. Blood, hair and various biopsies. Tests that focussed on her human self. Tests that focussed on the solid chunk of magic in her chest. The kitten pillows helped somewhat with the hollow, voidy feeling inside her, but just a bit. They weren’t a long term solution, but they helped in the really bad moments. It was like getting used to a weird texture or taste when you had no choice but to endure it. When she’d tried to verbalise it to Jones, she’d simply nodded, commented “bad stim, gotcha,” and promised to keep the heartbeat pillows coming whenever she needed them. With movement, it…
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44 – Lineage
‘I hope this was-’ Ryan started. ‘You don’t have to keep saying shit like that,’ she said, ‘or apologising, or whatever. I don’t think you know how far above the baseline of every single fucking person in my life you are.’ She pulled the crinkled silver packet of coffee beans from her pocket. ‘Why’d you get these?’ Ryan blinked and looked a little surprised at the question. ‘Well, in the time I’ve known you, you seem to have drunk an inordinate amount of-’ ‘Cause you know I like coffee. Exactly. You got me something you thought I would like. And, to reiterate, I did. Last birthday present…
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43 – Cake
In a way, the rest of the day was familiar. After the accident, she hadn’t been in a coma – which was apparently Ryan and the others were referring to “being dead for nearly a month”. No coma, but a long stretch without many memories. A long sleep, like a princess in a castle. After she finally had a longer period of wakefulness, the days had been filled with tests. Blood draws and tentative appointments with specialists to address what hadn’t been sorted in the major surgeries. A lot of her doctors had been hesitant to give her details – assuming that either she wouldn’t understand…
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42 – Birthday
The hug was the only thing in the world. One arm cradled her head, one wrapped around her back, and both held her to a warm, strong chest. ‘Are you all right?’ There was the stock answer you were supposed to give to that question. The “yeah yeah, I’m fine, nothing to see here, you don’t want the real answer” polite deflection that most people expected. If a cashier asked that, you weren’t supposed to give a real answer. They weren’t paid enough to deal with the emotional dump from a stranger. If a magic secret agent man asked that after you’d just been resurrected,…
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41 – The Colour Spectrum
There were a lot of questions that an agent had to ask over the course of their life that a human didn’t have to. Most of those questions had answers in protocol or precedent. All of that aside, Ryan wasn’t sure what level of celebration was appropriate for a birthday when the guest of honour could best be described as “dead”. It apparently didn’t give Merlin the same level of quandary as he had spent most of the morning decorating the lab. A hand-drawn birthday card sat on the rolling drawers beside Stef’s bed, and a banner along the wall had joined it. Whatever he did,…
