She noted the roads. She could have gone over her questions, or information on the subject, but she felt that the roads were more important than the Akecheta’s history.

She wasn’t driving, she had been provided people for that. She could still look out the tinted windows, to the side or ahead. Worse, she could feel it. Potholes and generally uneven ground rocked every wheel of the jeep dangerously.

This was an out-of-the-way road, but they were all the same, like country lanes bar the highway.

It reminded her of home. Rather than dwell on the past, she diagnosed.

The pavement has fallen into serious disrepair, and it’s been like that for a while, as seen with the regularity of ditches and wear. Her driver was gripping the wheel fractionally tighter, he’d changed his posture, looking over the dashboard to try and curtail the incessant rocking.

He was irritated. One might think that the locals would be numb to it, but they’re human, their minds are the same as any other. They may not be irritated by it, but they will become irritable. Driving this road day in day out, going to work and then home, work and then home... there hadn’t been many leisure activities on the road, at least not from what she could see.

Where would that irritation go? Perhaps towards their family, strangers. Where did it belong? It was a symbol of sloth on the governments part, any man could tell you that. A local government official could easily make the calls to fix these holes, but they choose not to.

She knew that wasn’t true, there were budget cuts made for health care, education, the military, but most irritable people to not think too deeply on the holes in the road. Regardless of their thoughts, they will feel discontent concerning their government, specifically what their government asks of them. Pay taxes, obey the law... younger males will grow to resent these things, because why should they respect them?

She would like to know the religious beliefs of such individuals. Atheism, or more accurately, a resistance to religious indoctrination, is a clear indicator of how trusting a person is, in their government, their social circle...

“Ma’am, shouldn’t you give the Akecheta’s file another look?”

She looked to the young exterminator, some hotshot with a boorish name. “No.”

Robert sat up in his seat, flexing some childish pride and superiority, “The doc knows what she’s doing Hunter. She’s planned this trip for months, that’s the type of body you’re guarding.” Bob scoffed, “She’s not like Greem, she actually thinks.”

Attrition raised her eyebrow, “I don’t need you to speak for me Robert, especially if it’s negatively on a dead man.”

Bob flushed around the nose, barely getting out a sullen “Yes ma’am.”

Hunter smiled to himself. “Driver, how long are you going to drag our asses ‘cross the dirt for?”

“Not long at all,” Attrition sighed, “There’s a large clearing up ahead, and given it’s irregularity, it must be our destination.” It only made sense. Ireland was a small country, they would have few prisons and fewer for women. One or two large facilities.

Bob practically licked the window, “You’re right doc, I see it now! There’s the genius of our life time!”

Hunter scoffed, “She just told you to stop babbling on like a cook.”

Bob turned in his seat, wearing a false hard face, “I’m still allowed to talk you up, right Ma’am?”

Attrition flexed her eyebrow, narrowed her vision, turned away, and smiled. “It would be egotistical of me to speak of myself in that way, wouldn’t it?”

She reflected fondly on her time with Robert Parker and felt a pang concerning current events.

Poor Robert. He had been working tirelessly in his own way, to convince her and the deployment committee that he would be an asset in the founding of City X. He had her convinced, she backed him, all he needed to say was that he, better than anyone else in their organisation, knew ‘Shamrock’.

Dr Attrition had not told him about the plan A for handling the boy, it was just something to tie over the other department heads. She hadn’t expected it to work anyway, Attrition planned for failure, always. ‘Winning’ was always a futile task, a poorly defined objective. She’d always believed there was no way to ‘win’ life, a philosophers take as an old friend had once joked.

Here they were, preparing as best they could for the meeting with the sole (or souless) lord of Ireland. Bob would stay with her to handle the boy, the exterminators would be there to guard Right’s life if this activity attracted any unwanted third parties.

Of course, if Robert or the red-ties failed, then there would always be backups. If monsters wiped out their small armed force, then Axel Right would have his own Geckos to back him up. If the boy proved to be as rebellious as she expected and Bob failed to guide him into compliance... well, then she’d have to wipe her proteges ass again.

An electrified gate opened ahead of them with less than a flicker from the driver. They parked the car and got to walking. It was cold here. Not as cold as the Midwest this time of year, but it was still a gloomy environment that reminded her of the old farms. She was looking back on someoneelses memories, that’s what it was like now.

She left and joined the organisation in her twenties, if she remembered correctly. The last time she’d gone home, the last time, was in her forties. It had been over a decade but it was so clear. For a time, she thought that event had brought some catharsis, but over the years she came to realise that though she had finely treated the wounds they left her with a scar would always remain.

Cults are good for that. Parasocial symbiosis. It was a bubbling curse-

“Ma’am?”

The Exterminator brought her back to reality. She wasn’t there, she was with them and her father. They were dead. She was living presently. “Excuse me. Robert isn’t as right as I'd like. It’s like Howard’s been saying lately, we’re getting old.”

She walked ahead of her guards through the front door. A blast of warm air blew against her coattails as she came into the main building. It was as she expected, minimum security at the door, perhaps at a medium level for a first world prison. There was a sticky white-grey paint across the grainy square walls, the turns never ending. The guards, men better off sitting than standing gave her no opposition as they checked her credentials.

She wasn’t sure on the law concerning prison visitation, regardless, she’d sit with the last of the Akecheta on her terms.

Bob was checking the halls and walkways with superficial glances, “Doc, are you sure you wanna go it alone?”

She shrugged, speaking loud enough for the prison officer meeting with them to hear, “Yes. She’s just a child. Though I want you waiting at the door; don’t go wandering and don’t press your noise up against the glass, they hate to feel like their being studied.”

It was airy. There were netted windows that made the site feel more open than it was. This Attrition was a fan of. Architecture was a personal interest of hers, how buildings were drawn and designed by human minds for an express purpose had impressed her as a child.

Barns for animals and storage, homes built around culture and life style... Attrition regretted not meeting with the original architect of the cities before his death, wondering if the buildings he spawned were from his mind, or something else entirely.

“Please refrain from physical contact with the prisoner,” said the man loosely patting her down. The doctor didn’t respond.

A buzzer sounded as she entered a wide room bathed in dim white light. There were no other visitors, no other prisoners, only the girl.

Dr Attrition looked at her from across the room, her simple t-shirt and hoody slightly different shades of grey. It wasn’t a uniform, it seemed the prison system here resisted the urge to dehumanise it’s inhabitants. More stricking was the medical eye patch over one over her left eye. Charity remembered the footage, the file. She lost it in the brief scuffle with the boy. It could still be regenerated with foam. With a small amount of help.

The Akecheta snickered, then looked past the doctor, “Forget it,” she shouted, “Matt, take me back to my cell.”

Dr Attrition paid no her no mind, sitting adjacent to the patient.

“Good afternoon Tayanita, my name-”

“Doesn’t matter, ‘doctor’, you’re fucking outta here.”

“May I ask why?”

The girl laughed with a mocking surprise. To Charity, it seemed to contrast the restless bags beneath her eyes. Tayanita leaned forward, “I don’t talk to women with cocks, and wearing that damn tie is cocky as it gets.”

A lot of foul language. Attrition guessed whether that spoke to her general character or just her disposition towards the organisation. She guessed both.

“You look just like Sequeyah, was she your aunt perhaps? Lord, she might’ve been you’re great aunt-”

“The fuck are you mouthing on about? I don’t know a Sequeyah, but I do know that you’re not getting shit out of me.”

On the contrary, Attrition thought to herself, ‘shit seems to be the only thing I'll get from you’. She didn’t say it, that wouldn’t make any progress.

“No, you wouldn’t know her. Your numbers were thinning when she died, and then the rest of them followed. Still, you have her eyes, her nose... I suppose that’s what living in such a small, closed community does to a populace.”

Tayanita flared her nostrils, “Are you calling me inbred?”

Dr Attrition raised her eyebrow, with a hint of inquiry. “No. I’m just speaking from experience. I grew up on a farm, one that didn’t mingle with outsiders, one that kept a particular way of thinking. When I finally found the strength to leave, your ranch was one of the first places I came across. It was like looking at myself. We were so similar and yet different in such a foundational level. I lived with them for a time, and we were warm, despite me being affiliated with the ‘men in black’, and despite me being opposed to their beliefs.”

After she was done, Tayanita hissed in, “Don’t think for a second that you can tame me with stories.”

“Oh?” the eyebrow raised further, “You don’t like stories?” Attrition pulled a file from the inner pocket of her coat, brushing a white hair away from her eyes and squinting. “I’m sorry, I’m an old woman. All I have stories.”

Attrition looked at the page for a while, reading up on the subject, who seemed amused in the same way a hyena might, “Then are we done butcher?”

That perked the doctor's ears, “Ah, so you do like stories, you just don’t like how I tell them. Did your father tell you that one?”

There was rage in the hunter’s smile, “The only person who could have.”

Attrition thought of how to broach the subject.

“You... are not Akecheta, you are an Akecheta. Just as I am an individual from my organisation, you are, albeit the last, a member of yours.”

Charity looked the hunter, this girl up and down. Her hands were clenched in fists.

“I do not represent anyone other than myself, that’s what I said to Sequeyah and it’s what I'll say to you.” She drew a breath in, “I’m sorry for what happened to your people. For how it was handled. Beyond that, I'm sorry that we didn’t finish the job.”

The phrasing was purposeful. Tayanita’s eyes widened, in another second, she’d be wrenching against her handcuff, “The Beast,” Attrition clarified, “we failed to kill it.”

She put a creased page on the table, “The Sky Beast. It was once human, once an Akecheta. It used your blood against us, it was bonded with magic to every part of your being. It fed on their souls, it broke their bodies, and it warped their minds. I was there, but I didn’t issue the order. That mistake was the old guard’s.”

Remembering the stories that her father hammered into her head, as Charity expected, made the girl sullen, “Yeah? Same CEO though.”

“His orders were to eliminate the beast. It was to be done at any means necessary. It threatened the world long before it started using the Akecheta. The old head of research believed that eliminating your people would weaken it, deprive it of conscious thought- instead it grew more powerful, brought another Beast into the battle.”

A corner of the dark faced girl's lips raised, “And you killed that one.”

“Not me, my contemporary. I give him hell for it every time I see him. Which isn’t often. Not anymore.”

Attrition gestured to the red text at the bottom of the page. She would have liked to know exactly what her subject was feeling at the time. Anger, disgust, sadness, but what else?

“You’re fucking useless,” Tayanita spat. Attrition made eye contact, “That, I’ll take.”

This girl was so close to Sequeyah, just a sliver of dark difference on her face, behind her eyes.

“Tayanita, you served the Mountain in Egypt, cleaned up our mess. You did good work, collecting that monster head count there.”

“Five”

“Four monsters,” Attrition corrected, “a number to put any Unit to shame.”

“Are you one of them?” Tayanita asked.

The doctor lied, “No.” She carried on, “My predecessor was wrong, we could not stop the sky Beast by waging genocide, and you, in your thousand-year history with the entity, failed to fully destroy it, just as we did.”

A cloud passed by the window. Charity put her hand atop Tayanita’s weak fist, “Give up on hate. You’ll never find peace on that road.” She smiled, “Join up. At last for as long as it takes for us to set things right.”

The girl pulled her hand away, balling it tight to her chest, “Is that all?”

The doctor dropped her smile, drifting away herself. “Yes, Tayanita. That is all I will say concerning you. Now, let us move on to the reason I am here.”

The subject had been prepared, broken into. Just a little more work...

“I’ll cut to the chase. A strange zone is forming here. We want it. Thankfully, your old employer has pulled out. Sadly, he is still here.”

Tayanita’s eyes turned spiteful again, “Ah, enemy of my enemy.”

“You called him ‘Rori’. Do you have a second name? An address?”

“No. Not like I'd give them to you.”

“Oh,” Attrition feigned tired surprise, “you wouldn’t? The footage was fuzzy, but I could have sworn that was distraught on your face-”

“Shock.” Tayanita shook her head, “Don’t kid yourself, I’m not a pussy.”

Charity spoke softly, “But there was something more, yes? I met with your subordinates, the one who got you put away especially quick. You want to speak of ‘cockiness’, then perhaps you should look to that portly fellow that decided it would be a good idea to take his helmet off in enemy territory. He was lucky that it was Belfast’s cameras that shot him, and not his men. He was very helpful concerning ‘Rori’, he said many unpleasant things about the boy, and told me you were quite close with him.”

Tayanita tried not to give any indication, “I heard there was a Chinese spy, a woman that slept with half of congress. She had average looks, was unassuming... do you think any of the men who fucked her loved her? No, those men wanted to take the edge off after or during work.”

She was deflecting. “You’re not a member of congress. You’re a girl. A girl who despite her experience raising little syndicates and militias is completely alone here. I don’t know how long you’ve been in Ireland for, but I do know that you lost the only family you ever had, and that workers are not a substitute for people who love you.”

Tayanita opened her mouth to say something but got caught in the line of Attrition’s eyes. The gaze held for a moment on the girl’s lone brown eye. Tayanita seemed to change what she wanted to say.

She looked down, leaned back, “You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think. I realised how stupid I am. I’m not talkin’ about the fact I never went to school, I mean- I thought back on the first time we hung out, me and Rori. I gave him a fake name, just to keep my distance a little. When Clover left, he came back into my life, stuck around. I thought... Doesn’t matter what I was thinking, it’s just so dumb that I gave him a fake name and expected him to give me a real one. To be real with me.”

“You trusted him,” sheets of paper were still in the doctors hand, “you feel he betrayed you. You see the irony in that. Why would you want to defend a person like that.”

Tayanita took a second to think about it. “I don’t know whether I'll kill him when I see him, or if I'll forgive him. Whether or not he’s Rori, I want to decide, I want him to be alive for me to decide.”

“Alright,” the patient's tone was getting agitated, “alright. What about the night of the raid, how was your last meeting with ‘Rori’?”

“Humiliating. I asked him to leave with me, tried to... engage.”

Attrition smiled, “Yes, I understand. Concerning ‘Shamrock’ then, what would you say was different about him?”

She answered almost immediately, without a second thought, “He’s working with another Unit, someone called Gurl.”

The doctor nodded along, making note of everything, “This ‘Sea-Threw Gurl’, that’s very interesting. Perhaps a sign as to the current nature of this nascent strange zone... personality wise, how is he doing?”

“He babbled less. No incessant jokes. Showed his face. Before, he’d have bitten your hand off to keep you away from the mask. He had venom in him that night...”

Dr Attrition gave her room to speak, but was disappointed when she said nothing more, “Nothing else, Tayanita?”

The Akecheta blinked twice, pursed her lips, “No. I haven’t seen him in a while. He was out of town. Next time I see that green mask... next time I see Clover, either of them...”

She was disconnecting quicker than Attrition would have liked.

“Then that’s you done dear.”

She reached out, touching the poor girl’s hand. With the other hand the doctor reordered her files.

“Your mind has no physical form. It’s a basin of thoughts, memories, and ideas. Unlike the body which is grounded in reality, and your intangible soul, the mind can be easily moved, it’s a simple way of changing oneself. Imagine the basin that is your mind. Imagine it as a sink with a facet and a drain.”

Attrition spoke kindly. “Open the drain Tayanita. Let it go. The loneliness you’ve felt for so long. The fear you learned so young. The humiliation Rori caused you. The hate. Let those foundations of your mind, so close to your soul and heart, let them wash away. Now, the memories, trickling specks of dirt that once clouded your mind like an ever present dust... Rinse them away. Let a new, clean water wash away that boy’s face, the monsters, the ranch you grew up on, cleanse yourself of all the things you know to be foreign. Something at your core, something innately human, wants to ignore the strange and horrifying things you have seen. Trust it.”

Tayanita’s jaw slaked. Micro expressions that the doctor had learned to recognise twitched and pulled almost imperceptibly at the girl’s blank face. Attrition smiled, sadly. She brought her hand away from the girl’s hand and fixed her jaw back into place. It would be unbecoming if the patient started to drool.

As Charity pulled her hand away from the girl’s face, she brushed past her hair. Fixed it away.

If only she’d said yes. If only... This was the part she hated most. Reading off the document.

The head researcher fumbled for her glasses and drew in a short breath.

“Clog the drain. Remove the chain from the plug. Clog the drain. Refill the pool with these thoughts Tayanita. Forget what was flushed away, you cannot recover it on your own.” The core of the Doctor’s being didn’t like doing this. She knew it was immoral.

“You’re name is not Tayanita. You are not a monster hunter. Your name is Sarah Brooks. You’re from Wisconsin. You moved to Northern Ireland in October of 2023 to pursue an interest in... business management. You’re currently working at a bar to save up enough money to enrol in a succinct buisness course at Belfast university...”

Dr Attrition listed specific dates and address that would soon become engrained in the subjects mind. She filled her head with anecdotes so she could integrate seamlessly into her new life. Stories and more stories. She took no joy in describing the time ‘Sarah’ cried from joy at her ninth birthday, when she broke her knee playing in the back yard, when she met Brad Pitt in the subway... She came close to the end and was frowning herself now.

She checked the girls face. Still quite limp. Still as it was supposed to be. Still like Sequeyah’s. Still that of the girl’s.

Foolishness is what Charity called the sore feeling in her chest, the feeling that made her brush another strand of hair out of the girl’s face.

The doctor forgot the script that the designers of this girl’s life had written for her, studying her patients face.

“You... are friendly. Out going. You’re the type of person that can get along with others without having to change much about yourself, in fact you pride yourself on that fact. You’re an affectionate person.” Now the doctor’s mouth was hanging open, “You have hope for the future, though, not to the point of naivety.”

The Doctor silently gathered her sheets, regretting her personal interference. She attempts to analyse herself. Why did she do that? Nostalgia? Regret? Or maybe, just maybe she wanted somebody to have a happy ending in this little misadventure. Lord knew the boy would wind up worse off than her. Thing’s never went as expected, things always turn out worse than expected. Life is about excepting that.

Part of her knew. A thousand sins... why not one neutral deed.

“Sarah,” Attrition said suddenly. The girl blinked, shaking her head. There was a tiredness about her. The mind was processing the terrible shift.

“Wha?” She looked around, pulled against the hand cuff trying to stand, and her eyes started to widen.

“Sarah?” The girl reacted well; Attrition smiled. “You will not remember anything concerning prisons or doctors. When you get to your apartment, you will quickly fall back into your regular life, and this will have never been. Your friend will rectify any issues of memory.”

The new girl was rightly confused and afraid, as Attrition waved at a door and guards came in to escort the innocent away.

The doctor stood there in the light for a moment. Then turned her mind and body back to the current objective. She met with Robert and the rest of her own escort.

“Doc, are we really just going to leave her here? She’s associated with the Mountain, she could draw their attention...” He didn’t know. Robert was still trying to protect the boy and his secret. Though the girl was likely to escape, given enough time to observe her surroundings and overcome her withdrawal, unbeknownst to Robert, the bud had just been nipped.

“The Mountain is never coming for her,” this too was true, “she and the rest of them have outlived their usefulness to the crown.”

The blonde upstart exterminator snickered. He must have been amused by the fact she was sparing the cleaner from the cold truth. Charity would never admit it, but she took comfort in Bob’s innocence. He was good.

“Anything on the kid?” Robert asked, unaware of what happened within that room besides questioning.

“Nothing really. She seemed to know less about him than I do. Besides the fact that in recent history he’s been drawn thin, and that he has a poorly documented Unit on his side. Gunther, I want you to beef up my document on a Unit by the name of ‘Sea-Threw Gurl’. Sea as in the ocean, threw as in to throw.”

“Hunter,” the young man corrected hottily, “and that’s more a job for Bob. I have a duty to protect the VIPU.”

Attrition raised her eye, “Do you seriously think I would have brought you with me here if there was any danger to that little egomaniac?”

Hunter’s lips did not move.

“He has a Unit guarding him, and an amicable relationship with the sole being in this Country who poses a threat to him.”

Bob was the one to take a hard stance, to contest her, “With due respect doc, Right has more enemies than I have fingers. The Circuit Board just for starters, they’ve had a presence here before, and we still need to find their base of operations in this area.”

Attrition stopped dead in her tracks.

She whiped her arm out and checked the watch on her wrist.

Why was she checking her watch?

She seemed to be working something out in her head as my String watched.

What is she thinking?

“I suppose I can say now. It won’t make a difference.” She did not look back at any of her companions. She searched the pristine white corners of the hall, finding a beady camera watching her.

“You see Robert, we made an effort to find the Circuit Board before this project commenced. We have their location. And the raid has begun. It’s almost like clockwork really.”

She finished addressing my String, guessing it was watching her, and turned back to her underling, “It’s poetic. That as you and I visit his home house, our co-workers should visit the lair of the Liquid-Crystal gods disciples.”

The last thing my String heard from the doctor as it refocused itself on the surrounding area of the hideout, was “Afterall, they’re anathema to each other.”

My string searched every camera, every cellular reception every possible outlet it could find... but everything was normal. The footage on the cameras was bare, the cell phones it found to be nearby were that of the regular dock workers, and so there was nothing to suggest that they were being observed, let alone raided.

It wondered whether it was all a lie, an elaborate ruse. Did she simply want to scare us? Did she want to dissuade us from trying anything during her time with the maker? Or was she trying to goad us into doing something? Into interfering? Of course, the only threat she posed was psychological that went without saying-

Breach detected in sub-lain 1.

Breach detected in north wall, primary entrance and secondary.

Breach detected in roof of stage area.

I looked at it with my own eyes then, as they descended on my workshop. From a rope line, they launched explosive charges down on my work, upon my mobile tank, the tug boat, the rows and rows of inventions I had made from the unfinished work of deceased Units- They destroyed it all.

I raised my arm, paralysing a bomb before it made contact with me, tossing it back to the roof. Little black twigs fell in a charred mess, and I could better see an R.O carrier up above. It soon moved on, and I was free to hear the rest of the building collapsing.

I wanted to destroy them for this. These insects, whichever Unit was leading them in the field, and the Doctor. When the game is mentality, a psychiatrist can be more dangerous than a god.