THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS
by Andrew Shepherd
Vilhelmina poured herself something from a strangely shaped bottle, the soft curves cut with fat divots that made it feel like a strange cross between a golf ball and some sort of medieval draught. Despite the strangeness, it did have a nice color. Landing somewhere between a well-toasted marshmallow and a rich chocolate, Vilhelmina’s drink of choice had an appetizing color. She traced her finger along the top of the glass, not quite resolved to drink it. Instead, she gazed at the reflection that looked back at her. Even distorted, the silver in her hair was unmistakable. The mark of the beast was the only thing that came to her mind. Before she could take a taste of whatever she’d just poured, Vilhelmina heard the tell-tale tapping of the room’s owner making his return.
“Typically, people wait a day before taking their canned coworker’s things for themselves.” Watcher strode into the room as if he were floating, no real ire behind his words. Vilhelmina thought he mostly sounded tired.
“Most people don’t keep their offices stocked with exotic liquors, either.”
“I suppose neither of us are particularly conventional.” Watcher almost sounded sad saying that. Vilhelmina saw him sidle up next to her from the corner of her eye, saw the way he grabbed the bottle and examined it.
“This the first one you open, or am I going to find a mess on the other side of the wet bar?” Watcher asked, while smoothing over the creases and bubbles trapped in the bottle’s label. He didn’t seem keen on checking, though, and kept his eyes locked on the bottle in his hands.
“Would it really matter? This’ll be my office tomorrow anyways. Ergo, my mess.” Vilhelmina saw the wry smile tug at the corner of his lip. She looked back down at her glass just before the soft clink to her left told her that Watcher put the bottle down.
“Augh, how you wound me,” Watcher breathed out in a comical huff. “Brutal and efficient. Is this how my successor plans to run things in my absence?”
“Shut up.”
“My, what crass language, too. I fear for your administration.” “Watcher—”
“You know, your people-skills could use some work.”
“Would you—”
“I’m sorry, dear, you’re going to have to speak up”
“Silence!” Vilhelmina bellowed, feeling waves of energy rolling out of her and into the environment. Watcher’s body seemed to freeze in place, though something behind him seemed to flicker. While the initial shock may have washed over his face—eyes widening and smile faltering—it didn’t last. Instead of returning to his usual smugness, his grin seemed to take on a wickedness Vilhelmina wasn’t used to seeing on him. All the power in the world, and this freak still gets to me.
“How’s the taste of power? Was it worth the cost of entry?” Watcher seemed to speak around his grin. Vilhelmina could feel the glass straining in her hand, her grip cracking lightning bolts through the otherwise clear cup.
“Would you save the sanctimonious bastard schtick for someone who cares? You don’t get to lecture me on anything anymore.” Vilhelmina rolled the cup in her hand, watching the last remaining dregs of liquid flow together with the kind of pop only the last drops seemed to possess.
“I suppose you’re right, no reason to lecture the new boss.” Watcher seemed keen to return to smoothing out the bottle label, content to let the silence fall over the pair. They sat like that for a while, both of them filling the time playing with their respective props.
“What was the price you had to pay?” Vilhelmina finally said. She studied the look on Watcher’s face carefully, drinking in every detail. She watched as Watcher’s eyes seemed to settle on something on the other side of the room. She dared not glance away in case something about Watcher’s face changed. Seeing the man’s face twinge with pain was, on a level, satisfying for Vilhelmina.
“I was tasked with hunting down the last of the Dragons. The Oracle declared that she saw me triumph over the last of the great lizards, and that only then would I be ready to take over as director.” Vilhelmina remembered the scaled hide that was hanging on the far wall. There was something more to that memory, though. The way he looked past her, she knew the story was incomplete.
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“In the battle, my brother was slain. By my own hand, no less. The only way to achieve victory was to give up everything that I was fighting for.” Watcher continued to stare towards the far corner of the room, his lips twitching as he seemed to mutter something under his breath.
“I guess the cost is always set high, huh? Means you have to want it to get it.” Vilhelmina almost jumped when Watcher’s eyes jumped back to her. His intense focus, Vilhelmina figured, was enough to make a god wilt.
“That’s not the reason,” Watcher stated, his voice taking on a solemn tone.
“What do you mean?”
“The Oracle doesn’t extend people this kind of power willy-nilly. Wanting it might help, but the drive to maintain that power, that is what she wants.” Watcher rose slowly rose from his seat while he spoke, and Vilhelmina saw that flicker somewhere behind him again. “The Oracle is only interested in extending power to mortals as a way of controlling them. I’m sure you can see why Gabriel di—”
Vilhelmina heard the fragments of shattered glass hit the ground before she felt the shards in her hand.
“Gabriel was your protégé, you practically groomed him for your position. Yet, you knew the rules to the Oracle’s game, how all of this works. Why did you practically promise the job to my husband?”
Watcher never broke his intense stare, his eyes taking on some sort of otherworldly quality. They looked muddier than before, Vilhelmina was sure they were a soft, sky blue. Now, they seemed somewhere in the middle of amber and brown. His face looked to be locked into position, a wicked grin amidst plaster skin.
“I intended to create the perfect replacement; someone the Oracle wouldn’t hesitate to use. Someone who could step into the role that I play, and not just as the director.”
“Too bad Gabriel turned the offer down,” Vilhelmina snarled, “seems you’re stuck with me, now.” As she spoke, she slowly rose from her seat. While Watcher may have been exceptionally tall, Vilhelmina’s newly augmented presence seemed to fill the gap in heights. “You misunderstand me, Vilhelmina. I sought to create the perfect replacement, someone who could perform all my duties and all my tasks. Someone who could orchestrate the plan. That person, dear, was yo— “
Vilhelmina’s hands saw far faster than her eyes when she lunged at Watcher. She just needed to find the first heavy object she could, consequences be damned. Her fingers had wrapped around the neck of the bottle Watcher had been fiddling with and, using all of her strength, she swung the heavy bottle at him. She made good contact too, shattering the glass against the thin plate of his temporal bone.
When the shattered glass and undrunk alcohol all hit the ground, Vilhelmina had expected Watcher to hit the ground too. Instead, he looked unfazed. Sure, his hair was far less kempt, sugar and alcohol splattered across his clean, pressed suit, but that was the only tell she had hit him. His skin was entirely unblemished, not at all looking like he was just struck. And he never broke eye contact with Vilhelmina, his eyes now glowing bright yellow.
“Wh— I—The Oracle took her power from you; you’re supposed to be mortal now!” Vilhelmina didn’t dare break eye contact with Watcher now, letting her fingers blindly search for something heavy to hit him with next.
“There’s a reason the Oracle was so keen to get rid of me, why she felt the need to cut me off from power.” Watcher brushed shards of broken glass off his shoulders, making no effort to move from where he was rooted now. “You see, Vilhelmina, the Oracle knows that she can’t control me; whatever I am, she knows I’m too powerful for that. She also doesn’t know what I am. And it scares her to no end. She has a plan, her own wicked sort of plan. Sh—”
Vilhelmina had settled on tearing a piece of the marble out of the countertop, digging it into Watcher’s neck. His flesh reacted, so he wasn’t shielded in some way, but she wasn’t able to get past the outermost layer. It was almost like his skin itself was indestructible.
“Less expositing, more answers Watcher!” Vilhelmina growled out. “Why me, why my husband? Why any of this?”
“It’s simple; the Oracle forced my hand. She finally found an angle of attack and she’s exploiting it. As for why you and your family, do you even know what the Oracle asked of Gabriel? What his price of admission was?”
“N-no, he just told me that the Oracle wanted to see the two of us and that I was taking his promotion instead.”
“The Oracle had a simple price for him as well, though one that he could never have paid; the Oracle asked for your daughter’s head.”
Vilhelmina felt cold grip the core of her being. People always thought she was a cold fish, an unfeeling and effective machine. On a level, she thought she embodied those traits as well. She never got along well with others. Gabriel, however, was the only person who thought differently. Through her relationship with him, she had felt as though her heart had warmed. And when she had had her daughter, she felt as though it had only exponentially increased that warmth. Vilhelmina had already been upset about Gabriel but knowing the cost of the alternative pushed her over the edge. When she finally became aware of her body, she had her hand around Watcher’s throat. Even still, he didn’t seem bothered by the entirety of her enhanced strength crushing his windpipe.
“What are you?” It came out as more of a growl from Vilhelmina, guttural and close to all her anger.
“Why don’t you look around you?” Watcher stated in a tone so annoyingly matter-of-fact that Vilhelmina only squeezed harder.
She did, however, spare a glance around the room. The first thing she noticed was his shadow, cast incredibly dark against the wall. Unnaturally dark, it seemed. And then she saw it again on another wall. And another. She counted six scattered across the walls of the office, cutting perfectly black silhouettes around the room and all radiating from where Watcher’s feet still touched the ground.
“What is this?” Vilhelmina shouted, Watcher only now wincing from pain.
“My task and yours did not differ quite as much as it appeared, my dear Vilhelmina. Now would you be a dear and let me go? We have more to discuss.” When Vilhelmina made no attempt to weaken her grip, Watcher pressed on. “Or we could do this, too. Your arms are going to be mighty sore by the end of the night.”
“Stop stalling and tell me what the hell you are and why you did this to my family,” Vilhelmina tried to speak evenly, thinking, There has to be a way to hurt him, something in here has to work.
“Now that’s a nice, commanding tone. Remember that for when you need to rally the troops. As for what I am, I already gave you hint enough to figure that one out. I’m sure with a little reflection, you’ll know quite well what I am. And as for your family, well, for the record I didn’t think she would tell Gabriel to go after your daughter. I knew the cost would be too high for him, but I never intended for the target to be so… well, so inopportune.”
“But you knew that someone was going to be at risk anyways?”
“Well, certainly something or someone. The Oracle isn’t exactly handing out power without a price. I knew that Gabriel would say no to whatever the offer was, and that the Oracle would have you trade his life for her power.”
Vilhelmina felt her arms start to go slack. She thought back to the urgency with which Gabriel had urged her to do it, the clarity in his eyes as he begged her to end his life. “For the greater good,” he had said. Vilhelmina dropped back onto her stool.
“You need to remember this feeling, Vilhelmina,” Watcher said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “otherwise this was all for nothing. Of all the agents that I’ve tended in the last 400 years, you’re the only one that I felt could take over when I had to take my leave. I’m sorry that this is how it all had to happen, but the Oracle made her move before I could make mine.” There was a beat of silence between the two. A steady, uneasy silence.
“Tell me, Watcher, if the ends will justify the means here?” Vilhelmina’s voice sounded hollow.
“If everything goes to plan, then we’ll have saved more than just the world. The Oracle’s plan puts everything at peril, and the only way to stop it is from the inside. If there’s any consolation, the reckoning will put everyone in the wrong here out of the world’s misery. Myself included.”
“Seems like a hollow victory to me.”
“It’ll be your best bet to save everyone, your daughter included.”
Vilhelmina looked back towards Watcher, eyes unglued from the spot on the floor she had kept them.
“The only way that this plan works, though, is if you own what you’ve done. I need you to make everyone think you’re proud of all of this.” Now Watcher seemed to be unable to meet Vilhelmina’s eye. “You need to let your daughter hate you for what you’ve done. That’s the only way for this to all work.”
Vilhelmina wanted to react. She wanted to grab something heavy, something sharp, anything that could pierce through Watcher’s thick hide. She wanted to destroy the foundation of this building. She wanted to watch the life drain from the Oracle’s eyes. Instead, she just sighed.
“Fine, Watcher. I’ll play your game. You had better hope this works, otherwise—”
“I know. You’ll ‘find me and bring an end to me yourself.’ Look, if this all fails, I will gladly offer my neck up to you.” Watcher made his way to the door, pausing at the threshold to look at Vilhelmina one more time.
“I’ll leave you alone for the night, I’m sure you have a lot to think about.” And like that, Watcher was gone.
Vilhelmina sat in the empty office, booze seeping into the floorboards and broken glass littered in all the places one might miss them. She felt cold, a hollow feeling she almost forgot planting itself in place of where all the warmth was once kept. If it’ll keep my daughter safe, Vilhelmina thought to herself, then I’ll be the villain everyone always thought of me. She grabbed another glass from somewhere behind the counter and poured herself a drink from a new bottle. Clear drink mingled inside clear glass as Vilhelmina looked somewhere past her hands. I’ll be the best damn villain anyone’s ever seen.
Andrew Shepherd is a senior pursuing a Baccalaureate in Art with a focus on Illustration. They enjoy storytelling in the many forms it takes with a special interest in visual storytelling. They hope to one day share that love of storytelling with the world.