​Intermission 10. Lily

At the top of the BioTech Tower, silence reigned. Not peace, but the tension of a spring wound to breaking.

Lily stood by the panoramic window, looking at the City but not seeing it. Her porcelain face was twisted by an emotion no one had seen on her face in many years — anger.

She turned sharply, crossed the room toward the table carved from a single slab of white onyx, grabbed the ritual dagger lying upon it, and drove it into the surface with inhuman force. The onyx cracked, and the table split apart with a sharp, resounding snap.

Amy, standing by the door, didn’t even flinch. She stepped closer.

“Our plan with the Agency is still on track,” she said softly, soothingly. “Michael got what he wanted. They’re no longer a threat, and soon—”

“But this isn’t about the Agency, Amy!” Lily hissed, struggling to keep her voice level, its sound scraping like metal on stone. She stared at the split table, at the dagger trembling in the fracture. “How—why—did she dare interfere with my design? How could a creature like that ruin everything?! Last night... you felt it too, didn’t you?”

She tore the dagger from the fissure and hurled it at the wall with violent force.

“Yes,” Amy answered after a brief pause. “Everyone felt it.”

“A century and a half. A century and a half of preparation! I found him, guided him, built the perfect trap, the perfect lure! Everything we worked toward, everything we sought — all of it undone!”

Amy lowered her gaze; her voice was gentle but firm:

“Everything you sought, Lily, was to bring Him back.”

Lily’s rage dimmed for a heartbeat, replaced by something older, endless — pain.

“Yes,” she whispered, and her whisper was more terrifying than any scream. “That is all I ever sought.”

Deep inside, she knew the truth: power had become a burden. She was tired of eternal dominion, of a game where every move was only the consequence of former triumphs. The struggle with the Agency had never been about power — it had been her last justification, her last hope that something existed beyond it.

“And what now?” Lily smoothed back her hair, her fingers trembling with the fury she still fought to contain. “Even if our plan with the Agency succeeds, what then? Our main advantage... is gone. He is in the hands of that... that nothing.”

Amy carefully retrieved the dagger from the floor and set it back on the table, covering the crack as if placing a dressing over a wound.

“Look at it from another angle,” she said. “You assume Mark is a victim — that he’s weaker, that she’s controlling him.”

Lily shot her a razor-sharp glance — she understood at once where Amy was going.

“What if he hasn’t crossed over to her side?” Amy continued calmly. “What if she has joined him?”

Cold, sobering clarity returned to Lily.

“If it’s the other way around,” Amy finished, “then we don’t just gain an advantage. We gain everything.”

Amy stepped to the window and stood beside her, looking out at the glowing City.

“Go to the river, Lily,” Amy suggested. “Maybe He knows.”

The reply did not come immediately.

“Even before this, it was difficult, Amy — unbearably so.,” Lily said bitterly. She’d calmed down by then. “Now it grows harder with every passing day.”

She paused, weighing the risks.

“No. I won’t go. It could make things worse.” At last, she concluded, “But we need to know what’s happening in the Ring. I can’t go there — the Agency is monitoring me. So it will have to be you. Find out what he knows now... and what he has become.”

Lily’s gaze sank into the lights of the City. Amy was right. Despair was an emotion for humans, and Lily hadn’t been human for a long time.

“Yes,” she said. Her voice had become emotionless again, cold as a machine. “You’re right. We need to assess the asset.”