Dominique’s eyes pop open, but Sam clamps her hand over her mouth and muffles her terrible gasp.
Sebastian was right. The first time was the hardest. This time it’s easier, and Sam feels like she’s standing next to herself, watching her own hand twist the knife, the woman shudder on the blade, her legs giving way. Before she can even fall, Sam’s already withdrawing the knife from the gaping wound and changing the blade into a cloud of dust. Her hand pulls back from the woman’s mouth, shifting slightly in order to transmute away her fingerprints, turning the slight film of human grease on her skin into water droplets in the air. By the time Sam is done, Dominique has gone still.
Sam kneels by the body and puts her hand against the woman’s chest, right next to the wound. The wound begins to close up under her touch, the tissue forced to stitch itself together, flesh closing up again. Sam transmutes the blood on the woman’s shirt into water, so that it will dry into nothing. But she leaves the body where it is, fully visible. She wants it to be found, wants Lumines to know. Wants them to understand what Diamond ordered in retaliation for Hanover.
Sam stares down at the woman’s lifeless face, devoid now of that easy smile. This close, Dominique looks younger than she thought, a girl her own age. She seemed nice. If Sam had been in Lumines, perhaps they would have been friends. A lump forms in her throat, and she swallows it angrily down. What a useless thought. She looks up again and along the street. The party is still going in the distance, sounds of laughter and music and loud conversations. Again, she looks for Ari. But there is only damp cobblestone and weak lamplight, and ancient walls that have witnessed far worse.
By the time Sam stands up and walks away, there’s no physical evidence that she was there at all.
Recent research, however, suggests that Brutus was indeed a bioalchemist, and may have killed Caesar with a transmutation, his mere hand on Caesar’s shoulder causing internal bleeding akin to wounds wrought with blades, thus planting the rumor that the Roman dictator had been assassinated by physical blades.
“Ides of March: The Truth of Caesar’s Death” by Norinaga, March 15, 1974
