"Hoshimi."
Abandoned factories loomed on either side, their windows dark, their smokestacks dormant. The morning sun had barely crested the horizon, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and pale gold.
Hoshimi sat in the back seat of the stolen sedan, his hands folded in his lap, his violet eyes fixed on nothing.
He hadn't spoken since they'd escaped Reina.
Kira sat beside him, her hand resting on his arm, her fingers occasionally tightening as if to remind herself he was still there.
She'd been watching him since they'd pulled onto the highway, her blue eyes tracking the shallow rise and fall of his chest.
"Hoshimi," she whispered. "Please say something."
He didn't respond.
Neila drove with one hand on the wheel, the other pressed against her shoulder. The bullet wound had stopped bleeding.
Her blonde hair was a tangled mess, her coat was torn and bloodstained, and there was a bruise forming on her jaw where she'd hit the warehouse wall.
But her eyes were fixed on the road ahead.
"The safehouse," she said. Her voice was hoarse but steady. "We need to get back before the government finds it. I left the Goddess there and my other stuff."
Kira looked up. "You have a what?"
"A Primordial."
Kira blinked once.
She blinked twice.
A shiver went down her spine.
"The Primordials are real?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Are you really really sure?"
"Stop asking me, if you're going to freak out, do it in your head."
She glanced in the rearview mirror at Hoshimi's motionless form. His reflection stared back at her, pale and hollow-eyed, the scar on his cheek a thin white line against skin that had gone gray with exhaustion.
"He's useless like this," Neila said flatly. "We don't have time for him to have a mental breakdown. The families are coming. The government is coming. We need to move."
Kira's grip on Hoshimi's arm tightened. "He'll be alright, right? The primordials are real, the primordials are real."
The sedan pulled into the narrow alley beside the safehouse. The building was still there, still standing, still hidden in the shadows of the industrial district. Neila killed the engine and stepped out, her boots crunching against the broken asphalt.
"Stay here," she said. "Watch him."
Kira nodded, her hand still resting on Hoshimi's arm. She watched Neila disappear through the side door, then turned back to Hoshimi.
The safehouse was dark when they returned.
Neila pushed through the door first, her shoulder was still throbbing from the bullet, her coat felt stiff with dried blood.
The lightbulb in the main room was still buzzing, still flickering, still casting its sickly yellow glow and the battered furniture and the goddess sitting exactly where they'd left her.
Vert hadn't moved.
Maybe she had been too lazy, maybe she didn't have the energy to.
Her white hair pooled around her shoulders, her gray eyes tracking Neila's entrance with that same ancient, knowing stillness. The suitcase was already packed, Neila had prepared it hours ago, before they'd left for the Academy.
"You seem to be injured," Vert observed.
"Yeah." Neila crossed to the tiny bathroom, grabbed the first-aid kit from under the sink, and began cleaning the wound in her shoulder with quick, efficient movements. "Thank you for stating the obvious, miss Goddess."
The bullet had passed clean through, leaving a neat hole that was already beginning to close, Neila had absorbed a miniscule percentage of Vert's powers, and that was enough to accelerate her healing tenfold.
"We're leaving. Now. Hoshimi's useless, Reina shot him about six times, and he hasn't said a word since we got in the car."
Vert's head tilted. 'Is he in shock?"
"He's being a nuisance." Neila wrapped her shoulder with gauze, the bandage tight enough to restrict movement but not circulation.
She'd done this before, patched herself up after training accidents. "But we don't have time to wait for him to recover. The government will have every exit out of the city covered by morning. We need to be gone before then."
"He watched his mother try to kill him," Vert said quietly. "The one person he believed would never betray him. That kind of wound doesn't heal quickly."
"His birth mother already abandoned him. He's been through this before."
"Has he?" Vert turned to face Neila. "His birth mother was a stranger who never loved him." She paused. "He's never experienced it before."
Neila's jaw tightened. She stuffed the last of the documents into the satchel and slung it over her uninjured shoulder. "I don't have time for this. We need to move."
"You were lucky she let you escape," Vert said.
"You were watching?"
"Of course." Vert's eyes glowed. "I could feel my sister's energy radiating off of her."
Neila paused.
[I guess it would make sense if the government had a Primordial in their possession as well]
"Anyways we need allies. If you don't want to get strapped in the machine again, you'll need to help me."
"The Leviathans."
"Yes." Neila looked at Vert. "And you're going to help us find them, you are partly omniscient after all, you'll guide us there."
The cab arrived at 3:47 AM.
Neila had called the number from a burner phone she'd stolen from the Academy months ago, using a voice that was perfectly calm.
The driver was a middle-aged man with tired eyes and a radio that played soft jazz, and he didn't ask questions when two teenagers, a woman who seemed to be on the verge of starvation and a paralyzed boy climbed into his back seat at four in the morning with a suitcase.
"Where to?" he asked.
"Just drive," Neila said. "Toward the lower districts. I'll give you directions as we go."
The driver shrugged and pulled onto the empty street.
Hoshimi sat in the middle seat, his back straight, his hands folded in his lap.
His violet eyes were open but unfocused, fixed on some point in the middle distance that only he could see. His clothes were still stained with blood, his own. His breathing was slow and steady, but there was no awareness in it. Just the mechanical rise and fall of a body that had forgotten it was attached to a person.
Neila watched him from the corner of her eye.
"Hey."
No response.
"Puppet."
Nothing.
She snapped her fingers in front of his face. His eyes didn't flicker. Didn't focus. Didn't acknowledge her existence at all.
"He's been like this since the car," Kira said quietly. She was pressed against the opposite window, her arms wrapped around herself, her blue eyes fixed on Hoshimi's profile. "He just... stopped. After the Vice Principal shot him in the back. He just stopped moving."
"He's in shock." Neila leaned back in her seat, crossing her arms. "He isn't used to betrayal, he's a puppet, he never gets attached to anyone in the first place. Give it a couple hours, he'll be fine."
"Will he?"
"He's taking it worse than a normal person, he'll be fine." She turned away from Hoshimi and fixed her gaze on Kira. "But we can't wait for him. So you're going to help me instead."
Kira's eyes widened. "Me? But I—I don't know anything. I don't know how to find the Leviathans. I don't even know if they're real. My father never—he never told me—"
"Your father." Neila's voice was sharp, cutting through Kira's stammering like a blade. "What did he tell you? Before he died. What did he say about his work?"
Kira was silent for a long moment. Her fingers twisted in the fabric of her jacket. "He said he was a nightguard."
"A nightguard."
"At a restaurant.He used to come home at dawn smelling like fryer oil. He said it was boring and didn't want to take me there since he'd thought I'd find it boring too."
"And you believed him?"
"He was my dad." Kira's voice cracked. "I believed everything he told me. I had other things to do, I didn't want to dig too much into his past." She swallowed hard. "But I really didn't know he was a witch. I didn't know he was part of the Leviathans."
Neila studied her face.
"What was the restaurant called?" Neila asked.
"La Rosa Bianca."
"I haven't been there since... since before. I looked it up once. It's still open. Probably."
Neila's fingers flew across the screen. "There are fourteen of them, how am I supposed to know which one it is?"
Vert interjected.
"The one downtown."
Kira stared at Vert, too afraid to say anything.
The cab dropped them at a hotel in the lower district. A modest building with peeling wallpaper and a flickering neon sign that read VACANCY in tired pink letters.
.
"Get him inside," she told Kira.
Kira guided Hoshimi out of the cab, her arm around his waist, his weight leaning against her shoulder. He moved when she moved, stopped when she stopped, a puppet with its strings cut. His violet eyes didn't focus on anything. His breathing was slow and even.
The hotel lobby was empty except for a bored-looking clerk behind the front desk. Neila booked a room on the third floor, paid in cash, and didn't offer any explanation for their disheveled appearance. The clerk didn't ask.
Neila booked a single room with two beds. Paid in gold, surprisingly they took it here. Used a fake id.
The room was small but clean. A window overlooking the harbor. A bathroom with a shower that looked like it hadn't been used in years. Neila deposited the suitcase on the bed and turned to face Kira.
"Drop him."
"Here?"
He didn't move. Didn't speak. His violet eyes stared at the ceiling with the same blank, unseeing intensity they'd had since the highway.
"You're staying here," Neila told him. "You're useless like this. Call me when you get better."
She turned to Vert. The goddess stood in the corner of the room, her suitcase beside her, her gray eyes sweeping the peeling wallpaper and the flickering light fixture with an expression of mild curiosity.
Neila said. "I need you as a bargaining chip if Kira doesn't work."
She grabbed her coat from the back of a chair. "Kira, Vert, let's go. I need someone who knows your father. Someone who can vouch for us."
Kira looked at Hoshimi's motionless form on the bed. "Is he going to be okay?"
"He'll be fine. Stop worrying too much." Neila's voice was flat. "He'll survive this." She paused. "Probably."
Kira didn't look convinced. But she followed Neila out the door anyway.