lady_mab | Meliora - Extricate

Zoné Altair

At first, I don’t know what the sound is. I’m still half asleep, my alarm only just starting to go off to warn me to think about getting out of bed. It's a Wednesday morning, which means I'll have to get ready for school.

But first: twenty more minutes.

The pounding continues at the door. Enough that I realize that someone is knocking at my door and it's just not the trash compactor in the back alley going on the fritz again.

Grumbling, I roll out of bed, onto the floor, and take another long moment before I can lever myself to my feet. "I'm coming!" I yell. Or I think I do. I might just mumble it because the knocking continues to be annoying.

I shuffle my way through discarded clothes and boxes of take out, vowing to perhaps clean up over the weekend. Maybe. That might be a stretch.

"Alright, alright, hold your horses," I say and unlatch the locks on the door before pulling it open.

Ayn stands before me, eyes wide.

"What--"

She looks like she's about ready to cry. "I'm sorry for--" she starts, but her voice fails her before she can get the rest of the sentence out. Unable to form any words, she makes a small gesture that I can't interpret.

I glance down at her hands.

Distantly, I'm aware of dirt and smudges on the hem of her dress. It's cold out this early, and she's not wearing a jacket.

Held in a grip that turns her knuckles white, Ayn clutches a pair of tinted glasses and a phone against her chest.

Something inside me goes cold. Those are Catoir's.

It takes a considerable force of will to look away from them, to meet her gaze, which crumples as soon as our eyes meet.

"What happened?" I ask, voice cracking on the emotions that threaten to overwhelm me.

"I don't know," she whispers. She doesn't seem like she can make herself talk any louder. There are tears in the corners of her eyes, and upon closer inspection, there are tiny tremors coursing through her entire body.

"Ayn, you're holding his glasses. What happened?" A part of me doesn't want to know, to just ignore the presence in my doorway and go back to bed. Maybe I'm still sleeping. Maybe this is why you shouldn't eat spicy food right before bed.

Her shoulders heave, but she doesn't start crying. "He planned it."

"Who?"

"Catoir."

I stare at the glasses and at the phone and, finally, take a step back to allow her to enter.

This surprises her, but she follows after and I close the door behind.

My feet carry me over to the dilapidated couch, and, after a moment's hesitation, pat the spot beside me.

Ayn moves like a ghost, and in her white dress, it's not that hard to imagine her as such. She glides across the room and then drops onto the cushion at my side. A beat, then she holds the glasses out to me. "Catoir and Jonas planned... something."

"And my brother?"

Her face is pale, ashen, and her freckles stand out on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes focus on me, dark, deep, drowning. Slowly, ever so slowly, she shakes her head.

I don't know what to do.

Static fills my ears, blood rushes to my head, and I waver in my spot.

Ayn reaches for my shoulder at the same time I lean forward. Her arm drapes across my back and she pulls me in.

I don't know what to do.

She holds onto me, a lifeline for my grief as much as it is hers. "I didn't know. I couldn't stop him."

Her words join the background noise, her soft hiccups as she tries to keep fighting back the tears. I don't cry. Everything inside of me is hollow, empty. My eyes are dry.

I don't know what to do. How am I supposed to react? I spent years of my life chasing after him and then.

"Ayn--" I start, but then I don't know what to ask her.

She understands all the same. "He didn't tell me anything. I followed after him this morning. He met with Jonas." Her voice catches. "They had... It was something they had arranged with ALICE."

"What do you mean 'arranged with ALICE'?" It sounds like such an innocent phrase, except for the fact that if Meliora has taught us anything, it's that ALICE is not innocent.

"The Assistant Program Manager was there." She hisses the title, her grip on my shoulders tightening. "Said he was going to 'clean up' what they started."

Clean up.

I feel dizzy. Only Ayn's arm and presence at my side keeps me upright. "How did you get here?"

She's silent for a long time, trying to steady her breathing. Just when I think she isn't going to answer, she whispers, "I ran."

I stiffen beneath her grip, but she doesn't let me pull away.

"The Assistant Program Manager and Jonas were going to try and take me with them. I don't know, to meet their leader or something." Her head shakes. "Jonas let me go."

"What the actual fuck, Ayn."

"I don't know," she says, and curls in closer against me. "I don't know what happened. I knew Jonas was playing at something, but I didn't think... I didn't think he would be able to talk Catoir into this."

"Do you know what it was?"

Her grip relaxes, and when she sits up, there are streaks of tears on her cheeks. She holds up the phone. "It's on here, but it's encrypted."

"And you think this will have the answers we need?"

"It's that or he... All of this…" She can't bring herself to say it. She was there, undoubtedly saw everything, and yet she doesn't want to put it into words.

Perhaps because he's been telling me for months to just forget him, to pretend that Catoir is dead and that there's only Fletcher left, that I find it easier to say what she can't.

"That this was all for nothing."

That's when Ayn finally starts crying.

I gather her into my arms, and again, we cling to each other in an effort to share the burden.

After a few minutes, when she finally quiets down, I pull away and search for my phone. My alarm has been going off under my pillow for a minute, its muffled trill echoing through the apartment. I call Lysander.

"Hey," he answers, mouth full. There's running water in the background. "If you're trying to call out of school, you had better call the admin office, not me."

"It's about Meliora."

Lysander chokes on something, and I hear him spit out whatever was in his mouth and the water turns off. "What about it?"

"Ayn's here. She--...." I glance at where she's curled up on the couch, staring at the phone with tired eyes. "Something happened. I don't know how to explain it, but..." My breath catches in my throat and now I realize how hard it is to have to tell someone else. "My brother... got caught up in something he shouldn't have. He--"

I can't say it. I don't know how.

"Zoné, I'm sorry." I hear movement through the speaker. "Is Ayn okay?"

"I mean, as okay as anyone can be, I think. Can you come over? Can you..." I drop down onto the edge of my bed, and run my hand back through my hair. "Lysander, I don't know what we're supposed to do from here."

There's a soft sound, and I think it's from the phone, but when I look up, Ayn stands before me.

There's a hardness in her eyes that I've never seen before, but it reminds me of Catoir. Callous, closed off, determined. "We don't have to do anything," she explains.

I stare at her, at Catoir's phone in her hand. "What do you mean?"

She holds the phone out to me, and on it is a text from Jonas Quinn. I read it once, twice, and then another three times before the words start to sink into my head.

It's done, it reads. What he and I worked for is paying off. Henrik will announce it soon. But for what it's worth, Ayn, I really hoped it wouldn't have ended this way.

It takes a few seconds before I realize that Lysander is trying to get my attention on the other end of the line. "Zoné, what's happening?"

“Ayn--?”

“Meliora is over.” Her shoulders are pulled back, and there’s a hardness to her jaw. The girl who had just been crying is gone. There are things to be done, and she means business.

“Over?” Lysander repeats. I turn on speaker phone and hold it out between us. “What do you mean it’s over?”

Ayn rubs the heel of her hand against her cheek, trying to dash away the lingering tears. “What they were trying to achieve. ALICE is going to be pulled down. We get to go home.”

Home.

That word doesn’t mean much to me anymore, because I spent so long trying to reconcile what it meant with my family fractured.

But I know, more than anything, I need to leave this city. It has done nothing but poison the people I care about, and it’s finally taken all that it can from me.

She holds my gaze steady, then sets down the phone on my bed and places her hands on my cheeks. The gesture is oddly comforting.

Her thumb smooths across the ridge beneath my eye, brushing over the star tattoo there, and I’m surprised to feel moisture.

“Be proud, Zoné,” she whispers.

I nod, and she takes my phone from me. She switches it off speaker and steps away, talking to Lysander in a low tone.

I watch her go, realizing that this is why Catoir kept her so close. Her warmth, her poise, and ability to take command when no one else could -- even if she doesn’t want to.

Slowly, I double over until my hands cover my face. One deep, shuddering breath after another.

I get to go home. I get to leave.

I get to go home.

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