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April 18th, 2027. Several hours after Marrowmont’s shield network breach.
8:30 AM
The morning is cold and stark, sunlight warming Aoife from behind through the glass exterior of the shield network tower. That same light obscures her moonlight-pale skin and casts her shadow long ahead of her across the tiled floor of the lobby as she makes her way past the security desk, too lost in thought to acknowledge the many-handed wave of the hecatoncheire working it. Her hands buried deep in her trenchoat’s pockets against the morning chill as she makes for the elevators.
Even if the building weren’t on lockdown, and its protocols to make everyone passing through the lobby invisible to each other (anonymity a powerful protection in Marrowmont) not in place, she’d still be the only person visible in the lobby: Magic has never worked on Aoife. A fact that made her early life ... complicated.
Her parents never forgave her for being beyond their reach – a normal child born to two Sí-touched con artists who used their sorcery to force her rambunctious siblings to sleep, or for shutting down tantrums, or when they just didn’t feel like doing the actual work of looking after their children. They never could figure out what to do with a daughter who couldn’t be pushed into obedience.
She left home at fifteen and made her own way, far outside their reach. And when she was ready, when she had the weight of the IMIS behind her, having made it into the Irish intelligence service the hard way – proving her worth despite every barrier, every obstacle her superiors could throw at her, with no connections and no mentor to guide her – she went back for her siblings. Another thing for which her parents never forgave her.
Aoife closes her eyes as the elevator door slides open and she boards and presses the button for the security floor set near the top of the tower – too few of their own people fly to make the roof a good escape route. She breathes out, letting the breath carry away remembered rage, trying to find her center as the elevator doors close. As the elevator begins its swift, near-silent ascent she hopes, as she does every day, that her parents are rotting in fíoríochtar ifrinn.
And heads upstairs to start a mole hunt.
#
9:00 AM
Aoife stands reading through a stack of files in front of the interrogation room in the upper area of the tower, a lone finger tracing quick progress as she looks for something on the woman currently inside. She glances up periodically to watch Tome through the one-way glass.
