Headfirst into the Abyss

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the Sundowner was looking for – it only took a person with enough power. With digits etched into Phoebe’s mind the same way they were etched onto the Sundowner’s hand, all she needed was to ask Arjun for access to Scylla’s private network and that was it. The address leads to a terminal and terminal must have its owner; it’s not that hard to track them down.

The name prints out Virgil, Virginia on Phoebe’s own screen and she sighs. She’s not exactly surprised, after all. Viktor did report accident with Arianna, and he did include both Sundowner and Virgil in it. The question is – what does Sundowner want from her?

The best Phoebe can hope for is companionship, although she’s not sure what a tyrant would want from a soldier, no matter how known and notorious Virgil was. She was still, after all, only a human.

It’s against her better judgement that Phoebe decides to seek him out.

And, by seeking out, she means actually messaging him and asking to meet up, because it’s not easy to find the Sundowner and the Grimgrinner unless they want to find you first. Besides, she needs Arjun’s permission – for everything to be official and according to the rules, the Sundowner needs to request entrance to their sector of the Sleeping Sun, and Phoebe has t submit a request for him to be present.

He accepted; of course he did, because even if he was not curious, he wouldn’t have anything to fear. They are the power – the universe is them. This is something that Phoebe doesn’t have easy time coming to terms with, but this is the fact.

She doesn’t get to meet him, however, and she’s not sure why she’s even surprised. Of course he would not leave everything to the case. Despite the enormous power that he posses, he’s not reckless, not like Arianna. Phoebe supposes, if it were anybody else, she would be interested in them – in how they work, in how they’ve become. Isn’t it what she was trying to do, after all, when they’ve caught Grimgrinner?

Now looking back at it, at the possibility, there’s a greater chance that Grimgrinner caught them.

But it’s not Grimgrinner she’s here to see, no; it’s the Sundowner and even though they’ve agreed to meet in one of the empty conference rooms, he’s not in there on his own. He’s talking to somebody; Phoebe has heard enough records of Scylla’s weapon coordinator to recognize Virgil’s voice.

Sector 349, Conference room 64-B, second floor. Need the video feed, if you can give one to me. The message is sent to Arjun. It’s not something she normally does, but the thing is: none of this is something they usually do. She keeps walking and doesn’t enter, doesn’t interrupt Sundowner and Virgil because this is what she wanted to talk to him about – what could he possibly want from a human woman?

There’s no better way to find out, and if it means Phoebe has to eavesdrop, so be it.

She goes to the living quarters instead and goes to her own room. Phoebe knows, realistically looking, that nowhere is safe. She’s sitting on the floating mass of matter in the middle of nowhere – if you look at it that way, no place in the universe is same. ACCESS GRANTED flashes red across her screen and she gets video feed for six different sources. She makes only one full screen, the one where’s looking at them from the side. She can get the most of their faces this way, and she can see their bodies and limbs.

Virgil for her part doesn’t look surprised or scared. There’s uncharacteristic carelessness about her, but she seems as haughty as usual. She’s always been like that, even as a child; Phoebe remembers meeting her, when Arianna first introduced her teammates. It was before Virgil came out, but save for her appearance she didn’t change at all; she had that look in her eyes even back then, the one that said: I fear nothing. I don’t bow to human instincts.

But now? Now that she strands across something that’s not human – her current attitude is something that has exceeded Phoebe’s expectations.

She’s glad.

“I don’t see why you had to see me.” It’s Virgil that speaks first, too. “Awfully inconvenient for both of us, to be honest.”

“What are you going to do?” Sundowner says, smile stretched across his face. He looks way too comfortable, but Phoebe guesses that he always does. “Report me? It’s all you guys seem to do.”

“It gets boring.” She says, then fiddles with something from her jacket – a pack of cigarettes. She offers one to Sundowner and he takes it, and then tosses him the lighter when she’s finished. On Phoebe’s screen, the puffs of smoke she exhales are barely visible. “We gotta think of shit to pass out time. How does that work out for the two of you? You know, you and Arianna. The time?”

She doesn’t sound awfully curious; she sounds like she genuinely cares.

“Hella slow when I’m not looking at you, that’s for sure.” And he’s a sly basta—he’s sly. Phoebe nearly bites her tongue because she’s not young anymore. She’s not Arianna’s age and she’s most certainly not Viktor’s age. She’s past this—all of this. But she has to know. She has to know and yet, she doubts that either Sundowner or Virgil would be truthful with her.

“You always look at me.” Virgil looks like she’s about ready to roll her eyes. Phoebe almost expects her to. “Every day, I mean. So it cannot be that bad.” Phoebe isn’t sure if she’s returning the flirting or if she’s withholding herself, trying not to be hurtful. She has never seen Virgil flirt. She has never seen Virgil give anybody a second glance. She’s never heard of it, too. “Though I suppose when you have to look at Arianna’s ugly mug afterwards...”

Sundowner laughs – it’s a deep, honest sound, one of the rare human things he’s done ever since Phoebe has seen him in person. When he laughs, he only has his shoulders shaking slightly, but he’s turned wholly to Virgil now.

“All Frankenstein wanted was some company.” The tyrant says, his eyes set on the human woman. She doesn’t flinch but it looks, from the outside, like he’s trying to make her. Trying, and it’s not working. “I’ve gotten mine, you know. One exactly like me!” He flickers his hand and ash falls from his cigarette onto the pristine table.

He’s nearly leaning over it and the woman leans towards him, too, directly across from him.

“The universe has played a jest on you.” Virgil says, and there’s a cruel smile playing at her face. Sundowner seems taken a back only for a second – it’s like he realises, in that moment, that she’s not afraid of him.

And it is like, in that moment, that he loses the entire control of himself – the scar on his forehead becomes red for only a sliver of time and he reaches forward, the cigarette flicked and discarded somewhere in the room, because both of his hands are busy grasping Virgil’s face.

Phoebe feels the fear – the anticipation and the unease and she’s just about ready to lower the video and call Arjun and just—something, somebody. Some kind of help. She can’t let anything happen to Virgil.

It’s moments later that she realises that Virgil is smiling in Sundowner’s grasp, looking at him as if though he’s the one to put the stars in their place and arrange the universe, and not the force behind their destruction. This might be the second time they’ve seen each other in person, but it’s impossible that this is the second time they’ve ever spoken.

Virgil is tall; Phoebe knows the important people and their statistic by heart and she knows that there’s only one friendly person who’s taller than Virgil on this ship. Friendly, of course, excludes the two tyrants. Still, Sundowner doesn’t appear to be looming above her, even with the way he’s leaning across the table to reach her.

“The universe plays a lot of jests on me, Virgil.” He says, only audible because the recording devices in the room are programmed to pick even the smallest of sounds. This was supposed to be something private. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

He lets her go then; she looks a little bit disoriented, she looks—she looks a little bit sad. The door behind Sundowner slides open and he’s gone; Phoebe’s camera doesn’t seem him anymore. Virgil sits, fishes out another cigarette from her pocket – even Phoebe didn’t see where her first one ended up.

Three minutes later and Arjun forwards Virgil’s report to Phoebe. There is no truth in it.