CHAPTER 9 - POLYTONALITY I

  The new semester—although its start had been delayed—had just begun and was in full swing. Siena takes to the rhythm in a rather mediocre fashion; it's difficult for someone who's skipped the majority of their classes to sleep all day to transition to having a real, functioning schedule. The first mornings feel awful and it takes Gabriel calling her every instance in support to get Siena out of bed.

  For this class, however, she needs no motivation. Trauma Management doesn't interest Siena, and she doubts she's the only one in this predicament. When she walks into the auditorium, backpack lazily slung over her shoulder and ashen hair in the way of her eyes, she still makes out the faces of people who would rather be anywhere but here. It's a funny element in Magical Girl culture, to reject such mental health services offered to them for free.

  Of course, the monster feels the same for other reasons. The last thing she wants is to have an Agency therapist rummage around her thoughts and feelings and realize something is horribly, horribly wrong.

  The professor's here bright and early. She's a woman who could be on the older side of forty or the younger side of fifty with hair greying slightly at the roots. She gives Siena a pleasant smile and nod as she walks past her lectern, something she's probably done for each student. Still, Siena can't help but straighten up.

  Keisha waves at her with a big smile on her face from the far back corner of the classroom. She's been more cheerful lately, deciding that she'd live every day like it was her last. It comes with a healthy serving of fatalism that Megan always hates to hear, because it's like she's given up on surviving. Siena doesn't really blame Keisha—they've been…

  Abandoned, it seems. Hopefully the Conductor really has a plan. Lately he's been hinting at the restart of overtures across the world, though they'd be smaller in scale and ramp up slowly. Hopefully that'd slow down any possible investigation and allow them to finally gather information about how Magical Girls work from the inside in a real situation that isn't just protocol—

  Her bag clips on something—"Sorry!" Siena reflexively sputters out an apology before she even notices that it's Golden Promise's laptop she's nearly thrown off the table. "Gosh, I'm so sorry."

  "It's all good!" Lucienne beams, closing her laptop. "Make some space for the passersby, girls. C'mon."

  There are a few people around her who apologize. After all, who wouldn't want to be friends with Lucienne Monroe? It was a golden opportunity for a golden promise. Since this class has a decent amount of veterans, Siena recognizes a decent amount of them, but her attention is fixated on the girl whose eyes are like the sun itself.

  They shine, shine, and shine, light just as bright as Lucienne's smile nearly spilling out of their sockets. You almost can't stare at them too long, yet everything compels Siena to do so. Her hair, which isn't as golden when not transformed, still spills down her shoulders in messy locks that somehow still look like a halo, each strand catching the light as if it had independently decided to be radiant.

  And every smile, every cheerful projection of her voice, every interaction with these girls, every bit of her persona is fake. It is a torturous existence Siena can't imagine she'll have to keep on for… for as long as she lives, perhaps. Until she either dies of old age, or she's caught and slaughtered.

  "Um…" Golden Promise says before clearing her throat. "Something on my face?"

  No, Siena thinks. It's just difficult to speak with the human equivalent of a Hydrogen Bomb. "I'm just really sorry. Have a good day—I mean, have a good class."

  Siena hates feeling like a schoolgirl on her first day of classes, yet it's something she'll have to live with for a while. She hears a few giggles behind her as she climbs the stairs toward Keisha, whose smile has fallen now that she's seen her interaction with Lucienne Monroe.

  She doesn't even wait for Siena to sit. "What the hell was that?" she whispers, leaning against a palm. Her eyes seem to pierce the back of Lucienne's head. "You looked so lost down there."

  Siena holds back a sigh—or she tries—and lowers herself into the chair. "It's a lot."

  "Sorry Nana, but you don't get to drift," she says. "Not here."

  "I wasn't."

  Keisha smirks at her. "You're so full of life now."

  Her sister rolls her eyes. It's true that comfort is easier to find these days, especially with her siblings. "And I'll shove you full of death if you don't stop… harassing me for every interaction I have with you-know-who for the rest of the semester."

  "Don't you say you-know-who. That's so suspicious."

  They whisper back and forth, mostly masking fear behind words and laughter. Any distraction away from the living weapon currently sitting in the room would help. Occasionally, Keisha has to tell her to stop staring so much at the back of the girl's head, though she isn't as discreet as she thinks she is.

  "Oh please," the dark-skinned girl says as she plays with the purple strand of her hair. "I hate the bitch. It's fine for me to be glaring at her."

  "How much of that is now, and how much of that is from before?"

  She lays her head down on her desk—she really can't sit still—and allows a silent groan to slip past her. "Don't ask me questions I barely know the answer to. I just know it's split." A beat passes, and she nudges her knee with hers. "Still staring, by the way."

  The class begins a few minutes late so the professor has time to set everything up. Soon enough, an image of a see-through human head, exposing the brain, is projected onto the whiteboard and she begins to speak in earnest.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "All right!" the professor says with a joyful clap that makes Siena mildly recoil. "I'm Tammy Barrera—people usually call me Ms. Tams. Welcome to Trauma Management!" Keisha wrinkles her nose besides Siena. "This class assumes exposure," she continues, "repeated exposure. To violence, to responsibility, to moral injury, and to situations where the correct choice is unclear—or only becomes clear afterward."

  She clicks the remote. The diagram changes. Certain nodes brighten.

  "Magical transformation does not insulate the psyche. Deep down, you are all young girls. Human girls. Girls who see and hear things from the Pale Choir that humanity was never meant to witness. Some might say their song might be terribly beautiful to hear, but no one ever remembers what it entails…"

  Siena doesn't really listen. Oh, she certainly disagrees with the professor's evil characterization of the Choir and its song, but it would be suicide to voice it—

  "Ah, Lucienne! I'm extremely honored to have you in my class—yes, what's the question?"

  Golden Promise had raised her hand, the diligent student she is. "This is more of like, a generic question—but there have been cases of people hearing said song and surviving, correct?"

  "Uh, yes. There have been cases where a person listened to the Choir for an extended period of time and had their individuality survive to tell the tale." We've also recorded the songs early in the 60s and 70s in an attempt to weaponize it against the Soviets as a new weapon of mass destruction, but our devices could only relay white noise—but I'm afraid I'd be going off topic. So, if you'll look at your syllabi…"

  Keisha opens the class syllabus on her phone. "That bitch. Is she trying something?"

  "Huh?"

  "That's my cover story, remember?" she whispers. "Is she trying to gauge my reaction?"

  Siena glances at Golden Promise; she takes written notes and pays attention to Ms. Tams' every word. "I think you might be a little on edge and paranoid."

  "Paranoid when she's the fakest girl who's ever lived? God, sometimes I wish I could just kill people no questions asked." A pause. "Well, not like I could do her in."

  Siena lets the argument go despite wanting to tell her that if she's really here to spy on her, there's no way she would be saying something that obvious to blow her cover. The remainder of the class is rather uneventful. Students ask questions, but Lucienne is rather quiet, and when it finishes Estelle is waiting at the door to pick her up. Now that her friend is back on her feet, she's done paying Keisha any mind.

  "Well, that was boring. Wanna go hang out? Lunch?"

  "Lunch," she agrees. "Can we get something else than drive through fast food—"

  "I want McDonalds."

  "I wish Megan was here…" Siena breathes out.

  "Me too! Then we could all hang out."

  "Not what I mean."

  —

  Olivia would have loved this.

  The care seemingly put into each student, the professor's gentleness and niceties, the readings to do every week on a specific case of a Magical Girl who had let the job break her and what should have been done by the Agency to prevent this—all the little signs to watch for in a person. She was attentive like that. A girl who could have been one of the greats, maybe the greatest since Keaton, not in terms of strength but in terms of believing. Really believing in the cause.

  She'd never have approved of the road Lucienne is taking. Her eyes drift across the laptop screen; she isn't really paying full attention to the case.

  "Ms. Tams' exams are open-book and pretty easy, so you won't need my advice much unless you're that stupid…"

  A seventeen-year-old assigned to evacuation and rear-guard during a prolonged incursion in upstate New York back in 2015. Three days without rotation because the front line kept collapsing. Civilians bottlenecked in a transit tunnel. A handler override that prioritized containment over extraction. The report lists it cleanly: twelve confirmed civilian deaths, including four children, under her watch.

  "...annoying group projects which can be a real pain if you're assigned with some incompetent people. I'd rather do all of it on my own, really…"

  Then it was the usual. She couldn't sleep without seeing their faces, hearing their screams as their bodies bent and snapped and melded. She stopped wanting to come in to work, but did it anyway out of obligation while pretending everything was fine. Eventually, she lashed out at a fellow Magical Girl who told her to follow their assigned patrolling route instead of going off on her own, and got her sent to the hospital.

  "...I can still help you study. It'd be good if Golden Promise got tip top grades. You wouldn't want to bring shame to your name, would you?"

  Lucienne hadn't even glanced at her name. It's just more of the same, and rather low stakes. Trauma comes in all shapes; not all of it has to be the grandest thing with the craziest of consequences. Sometimes it just ends with a few burns and broken bones. Sometimes it just ends with hurt feelings—

  "Lucienne."

  That one is said differently, with a treble in her tone that snaps Golden Promise out of her thoughts. The blonde internally sighs in relief when she finds the plastered neutral smile on her face.

  "Hm?"

  "Am I boring you?" Estelle says, rolling her nebulae-like eyes. "Look at you. Save the west coast once and now even Star Sentinel doesn't deserve your attention."

  "Sorry, Estelle!" Lucienne clasps her hands together. "I guess I got lost in the case. Horrible what happened to her."

  "No need to fake apologize. I know you don't mean it."

  Ah, yes. This eternal game they must play. In ordinary times, Lucienne might have been entertained by it. Today, she knows she has much bigger fish to fry.

  Estelle continues, "What's the name of the girl?"

  Lucienne blinks, eyes subconsciously drifting toward her screen. "Amanda Brooks—"

  The pale-skinned girl chuckles, head leaning into her palm. "You're not as good a liar as you think you are." She purses her lips. "I don't know. I think I've been by your side too long to get fooled. Something's on your mind."

  Her 'friend' is annoyingly perceptive. "I mean, I have just come back from a coma. But…" she drifts off, blowing a raspberry as her leg bounces on the ground. "I dunno. Been a lot on my mind lately."

  "Seattle?"

  "Kinda sorta. I'm just trying to do my best for the Agency."

  Estelle rises from her seat, hands slamming the cafeteria table. "Have they got you on some secret job again?!"

  People around them begin to stare—not that they weren't already to begin with considering who they are.

  "Keep your voice down," Golden Promise hisses. "No, no, it's nothing like that. They've just been telling me about Essentia readings all over the world stabilizing now instead of their downward trajectory back in Seattle." This is technically not a lie, but of course not at all what she's been thinking of. Estelle cannot learn about the Recitals. No one can. "It means that soon they'll go up and we'll have to start playing whack-a-mole all over again." She inhales sharply, an act perfectly practiced. "I just hoped we'd get more time off."

  Her colleague stares at her, squinting eyes and furrowed eyebrows as if she tries to mentally disassemble her and get to the bottom of each syllable that spills out of Lucienne's mouth, but she can't. They both know she can't. So instead, she chooses to pretend to believe her, as always. She chooses to pretend like there is a bottom to the well of lies because she loves her.

  Olivia would have hated this. The layers.

  Estelle looks at Lucienne's hand, and her own twitches, but she moves not an inch. "I'm sorry. I—yeah, it's a lot to contend with. They'll have to travel all over the country no doubt."

  Now she needs to lighten the mood. "And I'll still have to make that damn class each week. Pfft." Lucienne lets out a fake chuckle, and is glad to see that Estelle mirrors her. "Thanks for the help with this, I appreciate it. I know you're busy."

  "Busy doing what?" Estelle shrugs. "I don't have classes to take. It's been dreadfully boring lately—well, not since you woke up."

  The small talk continues, but Lucienne's mind is somewhere else.

  She might have an in to get closer to Keisha.

  And it begins through getting closer to her friend Siena Marquez.

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