The reading room sat under a canopy of vaulted skylights, afternoon sun filtering through stained glass and scattering soft mosaics across rows of study tables. Dust drifted in lazy spirals, golden motes caught in stray beams. Nia perched on the edge of an oak chair, half listening to Violet turn pages in a heavy reference tome. Outside, wind rattled high windows like a restless guest impatient to be let in.

Deep inside Nia's coat pocket, her comm bead buzzed against the fabric—an insect caught in silk. She tried to ignore it, eyes scanning a paragraph that refused to settle into meaning. The vibration persisted, three short pulses, then a longer one: the pattern she used for requests.

"What is it, Nia?" Violet asked, not looking up from her text yet somehow sensing the break in rhythm around her visitor. The gentle cadence of Violet's reading unfurled like a river through marble colonnades.

Nia exhaled. "I have to get this." Her fingers found the bead, silencing it for the moment.

"It's fine," Violet said, closing her book around a slender bookmark. "I'll be here reading while waiting for you to come back."

Nia nodded, forcing a smile. She rose, smoothing the pleats of her uniform skirt. As she turned, a flicker of irritation pinched her brow—a quick spark she stowed behind a neutral mask. "Something about how that girl carries herself really pisses me off," she thought, stepping into the hushed corridor.

The library doors sighed shut behind her. Outside, the long hall shone with a bright midday graze. A figure waited halfway down the stretch.

A blond student—Blooms crest stitched above his blazer pocket—leaned against a limestone pilaster. His hair was slicked back so meticulously that not a strand dared rebel, and a slim platinum earring winked at his right lobe, catching stray sunbeams. He pushed off the pillar as she approached, the click of his heels measured and slow.

"Hello, Nia," he said. "I've heard a lot about you," he spoke, offering a courteous bow.

Nia slowed but did not stop. "What do you want?" she asked, voice edged with iron.

"Rumors say you're in dire need of money," he began, strolling at her side now. His shoes clicked softly, measured. "In such dire need that you take any jobs offered to you with little to no concern for your own wellbeing." He glanced at her, gauging the reaction. "As for what I want, it's quite simple really." The boy smiled, unveiling canines that gleamed too white. "I want you to leave the campus for today and, in exchange, I'll give you six-thousand credits."

Nia huffed a laugh. "That's not the kind of money a kid would have. Not the best way to spend your family savings, don't you think?"

"This isn't much for someone like me." He flipped out a slim data card, its circuitry sparking iridescent as he waved it through the air. "You see, my dad's pretty high up on the corp chain of command."

Nia's steps slowed, her gaze flicked to the card—iridescent circuitry glimmering like a dragonfly's wing—then up to his expectant smile. She tapped her forefinger against folded arms, mapping the angles of risk.

"Regardless of what you offer me. If I were to go through with this proposal of yours my employer would surely do a background check," she explained.

"You had to pay an urgent visit to the hospital with the news of the resident of room 337 going into cardiac arrest." The boy said. "Everything has already been taken care of. So are you in or not?" He asked, raising the credits up into the air.

High above, a cloud slid across the sun, dimming the hallway so that the floors gleamed less fiercely. Nia's shadow merged with the boy's for an instant—two silhouettes touching, then parting. She stared blankly, thinking about her decision, before her head instinctively nodded. She grabbed the card and immediately turned around, going back to the library.

"I'm glad you saw things my way," the boy smiled, voice lazy with triumph.

Back inside, colored beams still drifted like cathedral smoke. Violet had repositioned closer to the window, the atlas now propped so its spine didn't strain. She looked up at Nia's brisk footfalls.

"Miss, something came up, I need to urgently head to the hospital," Nia stated.

"Is it serious?" Violet asked in a worried tone.

"Afraid so," Nia said, tucking the card deeper into her pocket where its warmth branded her skin.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Then what are you still doing here Nia," Violet called out. "I'll be fine on my own," she stated.

"Thank you," Nia said, walking away in a hurry. "I've done a lot of terrible things for money, but somehow I feel especially shitty about this one in particular," she thought, the confession echoing inside as she stepped into the hard light beyond the library doors.

Nia left the academy, returning to her vehicle. A sports brand car granted to her by her employer. It was black, curved in ways that made it more aerodynamic. The back had an additional seating compartment with an extending ramp that would allow Violet to ride inside the car without getting off her wheelchair.

He bowed her head, pressing it into the cold leather rim as she let the engine idle, throat humming like a hive. "Did I make the wrong choice? Her family was so nice to me. Yet, I've got other things to take care of," echoed in her skull until the words felt carved there. She lifted her head, punched the accelerator, and shot into traffic.

Downtown lanes blurred—tail-lights streaked to red comets—while Nia wove between commuters with reckless ease, each gearshift a snarl at conscience. Towers receded; sodium lamps replaced neon; city arteries thinned to the tired capillaries of the outskirts, where concrete surrendered to rusted corrugated shutters. Her refuge squatted among them: a single-story bar whose peeling paint matched the sickly glow of its flickering sign.

Inside, the air was a brackish cocktail of stale hops, disinfectant, and forgotten dreams,

"Give me something strong," she remarked, slamming her head into the counter in front of her.

"Will vodka do?" the bartender asked, voice a low alto.

"Just fine!" Nia shouted in response.

Clear spirit flashed like liquid glass; she tipped it down her throat in one swallow. Warmth bloomed, fleeting.

"More!" She screamed, drawing side-eye from two shadowed patrons.

Another measure vanished. The line between relief and punishment blurred.

"Just leave the bottle here," Nia said, wrenching it from the barkeep's grasp and drinking deep.

"What's gotten you so riled up?" the barkeeper asked, polishing a glass whose rim had long ago lost its shine.

"It's nothing!" she replied, words hot with ethanol.

"Doesn't look like nothing," the barkeeper remarked.

"What do you know," Nia scoffed, but the retort tasted thin even to her.

"I've known you well before I opened this joint, long enough in fact to tell that something's bothering you," the barkeeper explained, leaning her tall frame against the cooler door.

"Yeah and if you ask me, the old guy running this place was better, asked way less questions," Nia replied, gaze fixed on the bottle's mercury shimmer.

"He also handled all sorts of illegal maters, hence why the only people who come here are illegal contractors and criminals," the barkeeper sighed. "But here I am, and this is what I get for listening to you and buying this joint."

"Don't go blaming it all on me. You said it yourself that the price was great for the location," Nia growled, though her shoulders slumped under the bar's weak track-lighting.

The barkeeper—Miranda—plucked the bottle away and hid it behind her back, eyebrow arched.

"Give it back," Nia squirmed, snatching at empty air. "Miranda! Give it back!"

"What's up?" Miranda smiled, teasing at composure.

"Arrch," Nia groaned, palms slamming the wood. "Fine! I did something that I shouldn't have."

Miranda set the bottle down within reach, silent permission.

"Did you at least get paid?" she asked.

"Yeah," Nia mumbled, shame curling the edges of the word.

"A lot?" Miranda asked.

"A lot, considering I didn't have to do anything. Not enough thinking of the consequences of my actions," Nia explained, voice small as spilled liquor.

"It was just another choice you made. Like every time you take on a bad job. You do it knowing that you need the money. You simply have your own priorities." Miranda retorted.

"You don't understand. I could tell it in the look in that person's eyes, he was up to no good. And that girl, I mean she irks me greatly, but she's… she's kind. Too kind for what likely happed to her because of me." Nia sulked, fingers tightening round the sweating glass.

"You can't have it call Nia," Miranda sighed. "I wish you could, but you can't."

Hours bled away in liquor-slow drips. Night folded the district in sheets of black, but Nia's contracted metabolism dulled true drunkenness to a lingering haze. She stepped outside, leaving the coupe behind, and walked through lamplit streets that glimmered like polished obsidian. Each puddle mirrored ghostly neon; each reflection mocked her choices.

"I did it for you, my sweet child," she murmured to the blank sky, lifting one trembling hand.

A figure emerged from an alley's mouth—tall, slim, jacket soaked in drying blood. A red hood framed a fox-shaped mask whose carved grin seemed almost sympathetic. Golden eyes glowed through the slits, small suns in the gloom.

"What are you looking at?" Nia aggressively retorted, stance dropping.

"Oh, Nia.. I'm looking at you," the figure replied, voice smooth as sake poured at a funeral.

"Who are you? How do you know my name?" she wondered, breath frosting.

"I have many names. Here I am most often referred to as the trickster. While the fellows below call me Fox. And then, there are others who call me by a different name. But you don't need to know that," he replied, itching ever closer to Nia, footsteps silent.

"The trickster," she thought, "You're an illegal contractor danger level SS," she gasped, pulse lurching.

She lunged, fists a blur—but her blows passed through vapor, the figure rippling like heat over desert blacktop. He re-solidified two steps away, mask unchanging.

I want you to know that everything that happened is a result of your own actions," he said, disappearing into the night—vanishing so completely it seemed darkness itself had swallowed him whole.

Nia stood alone beneath humming streetlights, the night suddenly cavernous. Distant sirens began to wail—first one, then a chorus—carried on a wind that smelled of iron and something much more sinister. By sunrise, she would come to understand the meaning of those words, when she and the rest of the city would weep at the tragedy that occurred inside on of the mercenary HQ.

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