The Fate Unfollowed by Phillip J. Peterson

Author:Phillip J. Peterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction, SciFi Fantasy, Series, Dystopian
Publisher: Pillar 4 Entertainment
Published: 2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Legacy Headquarters was filled with classrooms, wide squares sprouting off from the center stairwell in every direction on every floor. Although there were hundreds of students, instructors, and field agents housed inside the grand tower at any given moment, many of the countless rooms remained vacant for weeks and months at a time. The specialized rooms with specific purpose were often darkened shells, sitting silent and hollow. They were ideal sanctuaries for when students wanted to hide away, and the library was too crowded, or their rooms were too obvious. They were also the perfect, secluded cells for a Pramoore executive to lure and trap a wayward student for discreet questioning.

Faedra was circling around the back of one such student, who’d been fidgeting nervously in a center desk for the past half hour. He’d been summoned to the room at an early hour and told it was for evaluation. It was a loose interpretation of the truth. Faedra had begun evaluating him the moment he slid open the door and found the classroom dim and empty, save for the fiery hair and feline silhouette of Ms. Weiss. She’d gestured to the chair at the front and center of the room, and her huntress eyes tracked his nervous and obedient steps until he was seated.

She was on her fifth or sixth pass around his back and hadn’t yet gotten to the meat of their meeting. “Are you nervous, Alexander?” she asked like a cat batting at its prey.

The young agent straightened up his posture to an absurd and rigid extent, looking straight ahead down the ridge of his nose with his chin jutting out. “Yes, ma’am.”

Faedra leaned in close as she rounded his shoulder and stepped into his line of sight. “And why is that?”

Alexander cleared his throat in that quick and quiet way that people do when their hoping that no one will notice. When he spoke it was with the armor of militant certainty which guarded genuine timidity. “It’s early, ma’am,” he answered. “I wasn’t expecting a review today. I feel unprepared.”

“Unprepared?” She passed by in front of him and, once more, moved to his peripheral vision. “And what would you have done to prepare?”

His lips puckered and squeezed together, and he swallowed a lump of tension down his throat. “Just, um, I guess I would have cleared my mind a bit.”

“Cleared it of what?” she asked in a silken voice that was just above a whisper and just across his shoulder. “Savage secrets? Dark perversions?”

Alexander’s eyes widened as her hot breath snaked over his neck. “No ma’am,” he answered too quickly. “Just daily distractions. Daily chores and the like.”

Faedra’s green eyes narrowed, and her lips curved up in a devilish smirk. She let out a sharp snicker then held her glance to consider the tension of the young man. “Relax, agent, this isn’t a review, it’s an evaluation.”

Alexander’s eyes jittered back and forth, and his brow furled. “Ma’am?”

“We’re not here to discuss your performance,” she clarified with a slow, disinterested tone.

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