Page 2 of Love, Nemesis
“Hello, Ana,” he said.
For a moment, she struggled to believe he was there. He stood in black like a panther, with cool, immersive eyes. The blue in them broke against skin deeply tanned by the sun. Years isolated in her cabin had not spared her the stinging memory of those eyes, bright like glaciers and still just as cold.
He knelt, picking up the teapot by the handle. “Imagine the miracle,” he said. “In this very moment, you and I have something in common.” He picked up the lid, slipping it back in place with a gentleclinkbefore setting it on the kitchen counter. “We are both surprised that I am here.”
She resisted the urge to step back as he walked inside. He turned his back to her as he closed the door, giving it a subtle push to ensure the haphazard latch had taken.
“You must be wondering what brought the State’s Sub-Var all the way out to your secretive…” His hand glided over the wetcountertop, and he rubbed the water in between his fingers. “Humble home.”
The Var, much like a king, issued orders to the entire State. The Sub-Var enacted the Var’s will, and his own—every detail, no matter how glamorous or how black.
“I retired from the Numbers two years ago,” she said, her first words not just to him but to anyone in weeks. Speech almost felt unnatural to her in a world where the trees and birds hadn’t needed it.
She was concerned he might find her peculiar behavior suspicious, perhaps her degree of surprise or uneasy words, but she had one advantage. John Hailey didn’t know her, not well enough to measure her nervousness. She’d like to imagine he didn’t know her at all.
“I’m aware,” Hailey said as if it irked him that she felt compelled to remind him of her retirement. “I signed the paperwork.”
He perused the room, reaching out and tapping the counter. He grazed the wall, touching with all subtlety the glass in the window. The casual nature of his exploration captured a deeper part of his psyche. In his mind, she knew, this house was his too.
“You don’t keep a calendar,” he said with a degree of interest. When she didn’t reply, he faced her. “I can tell you aren’t accustomed to having guests. Though, I prefer that the water stay in my cup. Would you mind?”
She folded her long, wild hair over her shoulder opposite him as she passed by to retrieve the teapot. “Have a seat.”
He relaxed back into the chair, one hand on the table, busy fingers tracing the scratches in the wood.
She filled the teapot with a pitcher of water and set it back on the coals before preparing a cup with tea leaves. Despite her nervousness, her hands were steady. She seldom showed her nerves. She seldom showed anything. It was a disposition that had earned subtle jabs from her military peers who had once called her the Iron Maiden.
She didn’t argue.
Her body was her knife, shell, and hammer, and like the ancient device, the Iron Maiden, sometimes she still felt trapped inside it.
“Have you found what you’ve been searching for out here? Seclusion does wonders for a busy mind, andI can only guess your mind is.” He tilted his head as she brought the empty cup and set it before him. “The sun has treated you well,” he noted. “Your hair has gotten so long, and it has a pleasant, almost reddish tint now. I like it. Reminds me of my dear aunt, rest her soul.” He leaned back, surveying the room.
She remembered his aunt, as most did, headless on the executioner’s stage. She remembered the old woman’s blood splattered high on his shoelaces. Ana had been ordered to help collect the bodies and heads that month. Empty-eyed and silent, she’d carried the pieces off, knowing John Hailey hadn’t even noticed her.
She hadn’t minded collection as most had. Though gruesome, the bodies were still people to her, more so to their familieswhen she delivered them. She always assembled the parts again, adamant that there was still room for kindness, even in Hailey’s aftermath.
She wasn’t so confident now, the moment hanging between them. She waited for some justification for his visit, her hands by her side.
“Your last mission…where was it again?”
Ana had no doubt that he already knew the answer.
“Dal Hull, sir,” she said, standing by the warmth of the fireplace. Her eyes focused on the beautiful spider web now broken from the windowsill, Hailey’s doing. It was doubtful that he had an eye for natural beauty.
“Ah. The Dal Hull calamity.” He moved his fingertips off the table. The chair creaked as he leaned back into it. “You were injured pretty badly, weren’t you?”
“It retired me,” she said. She’d suffered several broken bones, a metal rod had pierced through her left arm, and that was the least of it. She had been grateful then for the State’s complex, metal prosthetics, mirroring the movements of real limbs. Her right arm, so often a burden, had ultimately become her last and most decisive weapon.
A rumored discovery deep inside a mine had drawn her to a remote town near the En Sanctan border. Also investigating the rumor, several of Hailey’s henchmen had been dispatched to the same location. Events had escalated rapidly and violently. Now, she was still in her twenties and her career was already over.
“The mine collapsed. You saved quite a few civilians before you were pinned under some rubble. My team died inside.” Hailey reflected on the event. “The only survivor who’d witnessed the events inside the mine, Pat McHedon, was put in a coma when a beam broke from the ceiling and hit him.”
Pat McHedon, the witness. She’d remember that name as long as life permitted. She’d visited him every few months since the tragedy two years ago. She refused to bring him flowers—hated to see them picked—but she’d found a beautiful glass globe to rest on his windowsill.
She waited until it was time to remove the pot and then filled the mug of tea. The steady stream of water swirled into the bottom.
“He woke up this morning,” Hailey said, eyes set on the pouring water.
