DISTRIBUTION: OPERATIONS DIRECTOR (MIKHAIL, 004); TRAINING DIRECTOR (TIBERIUS, 005); OVERSIGHT, ANALYSIS DEPARTMENT, INTEL DEPARTMENT, SECURITY DIRECTOR (BRUTUS, 006), FACILITIES DIRECTOR (BENTON, 008), CYBERSECURITY DIRECTOR (QUARK, 007), RENDITION SUPERVISORS (RASPUTIN, 009; NERO, 010)
Subject: Unauthorized access (continued) and resurrection
All-
It is important we address several unfinished pieces of business.
Our processes have failed in these areas. Reassessing the problems will allow us to sharpen our reactions, procedures, and increase our ability to prevent similar incidents.
Oversight is unsatisfied with our progress on systems and security analysis in re: unauthorized access in early June.Teams are being re-shuffled, and we will start from a new perspective. There will be mandatory overtime until we resolve the situation. In the meantime, Nero and Rasputin will begin their investigation.
The second failure we must correct and investigate is the apparent resurrection of Wilde (056).
This is not something that we believe the stories on and we will have answers. Mikhail and Tiberius will unleash the Horsemen and re-call all other operatives on this project. The Horsemen will focus on this assignment alone until completed, resolved, and catalogued.
As we are all aware, the re-introduction of this destructive force is immense.
Project Reality could be in danger once he and X260 get their next plan underway.
Quark will assign a secondary team to recover the files from the Winter Incident. We believe we must find it to help resolve this issue with 056 and X260.
Familiarize yourself with all the codenames and issues, then construct reports for submission to the above task force withinsevenbusiness days.
The Coyote And The Writer Regroup
SARI
“Our plan didn’t work!” I say. The words burn in my throat with frustration that tastes like stale adrenaline. “That was two months of pain, and nothing worked!”
My fist leaves a dull ache in the marble counter as the echo hangs, a brittle punctuation mark to the white silence of the apartment. Wilde lets it pass, only the slow exhale through his nostrils betraying the annoyance in his system. I can see the way his mouth pulls slightly, and the muscles in his jaw working to keep an elegant, glacial calm. I recognize it instantly because he’s taught me the same restraint—sometimes as a lesson, sometimes as a threat.
But not lately because there hasn’t been time for fun; he’s been too busy ‘convincing’ our allies with his attentions.
I want to shatter something, to make noise enough to chase away the failure that’s settling around our feet like fog. Instead, I drop onto the velvet settee, hugging my knees as I glare at him. He doesn’t look up from his drink. “Because I am not as patient as you,” I spit, “I can’t see the future in charts and graphs. I wantresults now.” I see the calculation in his eyes before he even opens his mouth.
“Beloved,” he says, swirling the ice in his glass, “our gambit worked, but not how we assumed it would.”
The words come out measured and clipped, like a chess master explaining the postmortem of a match to a petulant student. He makes failure sound like a step in a waltz—inevitable, maybe even beautiful. It makes me want to claw his face off, or kiss him. But I do neither, because it’s not our time, as usual.
“How in the hell do you figure that?” I sit up, arms tight around my knees, the words coming out with a sharp, incredulous pop. “You saw them. They were supposed to be picking each other apart, and instead, they’re a unit. They had a month to form a family unit, and they are tight as a drum.” I want to add that the sight of them—Talia and Taurus with our mates—made something inside me ache, but I don’t.
I’m not giving up that vulnerability when he’s like this.
Wilde’s expression barely shifts, but the corners of his eyes crinkle with a kind of condescending amusement. “Oh, I very much doubt that,” he says. “Lady Talia and I had many talks, and I believe her psyche is fragile enough in relation to her self-image that she will be a weak spot in the square. She will always think people use her to get to Mr. Taurus because he is so much more outgoing and draws people in. They have major cracks in their foundation because of her.”
He sets the glass down and leans back, his fingers steepled in a picture of someone about to deliver a lecture. “You focus on the surface,” he says. “You see their embraces, their determined public unity, and you think that means they are whole. However,underneath, it’s all fissures and fault lines.” He gestures at an old picture of us with Deli and Rafe on the mantle as if it’s an example. “My Darkness is the center, yes, and the others orbit her, but orbits are defined by distance as much as gravity. The closer you get, the more acute the risk of collision.”
I scowl. “You’re just using metaphors because you don’t want to admit we got outplayed.”
Wilde laughs, and the sound is shockingly genuine, a burst of static in the room. “Beloved, no one outplayed me. They merely played into my hands in a way I did not expect.” He stands, pacing slowly, and for a moment I catch the shadow of the old Wilde—the one who led revolutions with a smile and a lie, who could make a man betray himself with just a word or a look. “You forget,” he murmurs, “that our game is not to break them up, but to make their unity unsustainable. To force their togetherness to work against itself until it collapses.”
I want to push back, but he’s probably right.
We left the party with more than we came with, especially in terms of intel. I saw it in the way Talia’s eyes darted to Rafe when Taurus touched him, and the flicker of envy and hunger in the crowd when they realized that the leaders of the Resistance had been claimed by people who espouse monogamy. The kitty and her small group were pretending to be a family, but it was held together with spit and hope.
Wilde sits beside me, close enough that his warmth seeps through my skin, and he speaks softly, almost tenderly. “Do you remember the night of the accident? When my Darkness came running with him, and it was as if Taurus and Talia did not matter?” I nod reluctantly, and he continues. “She stayed with you for so long that they had to retrieve her. The guilt anddamage from all things past is deep within Delilah, and it will trip her up every time.”
He leans in, voice barely above a whisper. “In the past, we could work with that, my love. We made them keep secrets from each other—ones that almost broke up her entire household. That control is still there, buried within her heart, and all we have to do is make it work for us.”
