Spy In The Base, Pt. 3

I extended my hand to lift the golem girl up.

Daisy’s voice snapped in behind me. “Are you crazy?! She’s the spy!”

Little did she know, I felt something activate within me which gave me total and utter conviction:

~SALARYMAN’S INTUITION STATUS: ACTIVATED!~

“I strongly think she couldn’t be spying on anything from this room. And even if she was—how would she send information out?”

“I don’t know! Magical transmission or something!”

I rolled my eyes.

The golem girl’s mannerisms were way too familiar. Unless she was the greatest actor this side of East Gate, she couldn’t have been anything but an earnest, struggling candidate just trying to keep up.

It reminded me of a guy I met during one of my work placements. The way he slouched, the way he breathed… I'd gotten very good at recognizing the sound of pure, bone-deep exhaustion.

You couldn’t fake that kind of fatigue.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “You must be so tired.”

“I… I am.”

“It’s faking tiredness, clearly.” A low growl slid past Daisy’s lips. “And if it moves wrong… I’ll crush it.”

That wasn’t just Daisy talking. Having Malmitres also scared shitless would be entertaining if not for the fact she will lash out squarely at a creature who looked to be on her last legs.

I shivered, knowing full well how capable Malmitres was in following that threat.

“You’re terrible at reading people, you know that?” I simply replied.

Her eyes lingered on the golem girl for a heartbeat too long, before she huffed and looked away.

“So…” I softened my voice as I turned back toward the creature. “Why a dog?”

She hesitated. Her mouth opened once, then closed.

“Because…” she whispered at last, “…people will hate me the way I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Her eyes lowered to the floor. “Be… because they do. Everybody did, back home…”

Poor girl. What kind of place did she come from that could make her so advanced, yet so backward?

“What’s your name?” I asked gently.

“Engelklein.”

Daisy surprised me by speaking up. “Well, I think being able to pose as an animal for that long is a massive feat.” Coming from Daisy—the ultimate purveyor of life and its inner workings (too literally sometimes)—that was no small praise.

“T-thank you…” Engelklein’s cheeks coloured, and her lips curved in the tiniest of smiles.

A faint sound broke the moment.

Grrrmmm.

Engelklein froze, hands fidgeting. “Sorry…” she murmured, almost inaudible. “I’m very h-hungry…”

“Well, what’d you usually eat?

\\

"Nom... nom... nom..."

Engelklein was going absolutely feral on our trash. We almost couldn’t keep up with the rate that she was heading to the waste room.

She ate up everything despite how rank everything smelled. Our used Moonbox materials, scraps from the kitchen…

I don’t even want to ponder the logistics of converting that into energy.

Engel sat back on her heels, cheeks puffed, hands cupped around the next bite. “So good… mmh… nom… nom… nom…”

“…Was this what you ate to survive?” I asked.

Engel paused mid-bite, tilting her head. “B-Back then… everyone was too sad to notice. They didn’t n-notice me going into the trash bin much. Now… there’s a lot more people here than b-before.”

Crumbs clung to the corner of her lips, and she blinked up at me, still chewing.

I cringed at inadvertently being responsible for making this girl starve.

“How old are you, anyway?” I asked.

“I’d… be twenty this year, actually,” Engelklein murmured. “What a sad twenty-year-old I make…”

At least I didn’t starve a child…

I let her finish chewing before I leaned forward. “Engel… I need to ask you something. And I want the whole truth.”

“Mm?”

“Back when the kidnappings happened… were you involved?”

Engel's eyes widened. For a moment, I thought she’d deny it immediately. “I… was scared. I hid. Like a coward. I could have barked, or done something… but I didn’t.”

“If you had, you’d probably be dead.”

She peeked up at me. “Y-You’re not mad?”

“East Gate failed. You failed, the guards failed, the people walking out at night who probably saw something was amiss failed. It was a group effort.”

“I… I am sorry. I am so sorry!”

“It’s okay, really—”

I heard something rattle behind me.

I turned toward the sound, just in time to see an aloof Piper standing by the doorframe… looking all too pleased with herself.

“There you are! Was wondering where you wandered off to!”

Engelklein froze and for a desperate moment she stopped munching on trash. Her pupils shrank into pinpricks. Steam hissed from between her teeth.

“LAMIA DETECTED. ENGAGING BATTLE PRO—” Engel staggered, clutching her head. "No… no!! I can't… lose…"

Engel's body convulsed. Joints snapped and popped as her fingers curled into talons. Mana bled from her skin in thin emerald threads.

"CONTROL," Engel finished. Fuel propellers ignited, lifting her into the air.

She'd turned into a killer golem?!

My stomach dropped. "PIPER! RUN!"

Not that I was worried about Piper—she could handle herself. But Engel? That frail little golem was about to get herself destroyed.

Of course Piper didn't run. Why would a tank flee from anything?

Engel's eyes flashed crimson and fired.

The laser beam scorched past Piper's shoulder, searing the wall red-black. Piper was already moving, closing distance while the deadly light chased her around the trash-strewn room.

I ducked and weaved, staying clear of the beam's path, but I knew how this would end. Engel couldn't sustain this… and Piper wouldn't hold back forever.

So I did something incredibly stupid brave. I lunged up and grabbed Engel's small form.

The laser cut out instantly. "Engel! Stop! Please!"

Her body went rigid like a marionette with severed strings. Then she gasped—actually gasped—as her eyes turned bright green again.

Since when did golems need to breathe?

"I am in control!" she declared.

Engel dropped onto the ground, deactivating the gas propellers.

“I… am in control…” Shaking, Engel collapsed. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees.

Piper’s frown didn’t fade. “What’s going on?! Why did she just try to fry me!?”

“Swear to Malmagos, Cotter,” Daisy deadpanned. “You say she’s not the spy now…”

The lamia whipped her head. “Wait, behind the dragon attack?!”

“I AM NOT A SPY!” Engel was weeping now. “I am not a spy…” Engel’s shoulders hunched as if making herself small enough to disappear. “I-I was not good enough to be one… I was the worst. And that was before… the accident.”

“Did that accident involve us lamias personally murdering your family?!” Piper shouted. “What was that?”

“The lamias are an ancient enemy to us mountain elves.”

“Oh, that makes the racially-charged kill-switch better, I guess!” Piper snapped. “What is it with elves? Why are there so many types of ‘em? And why do all of those types have so many mental issues??”

I sighed, stepping in between Piper and Engel.

“Do you know anything about the dragon incident during coronation day?”

“No! I just hid.” Engelklein slouched. “I a-always hide.”

“Maybe your people are using you to spy on us without your knowing.”

“No.” For the first time today, Engel sounded more confident than ever. “I know my design in and out. I do… I don’t have an advanced capacity like that.”

“The dragon seemed to know to attack during an important day, though,” I pressed. “And more than that… it had your people’s tech.”

“I-I’ve been out of the loop for years now. Maybe we changed policies.” Her gaze flicked toward the floor again. “The mountain Fuschce… the mountain elves have talked about exploring the outside world. But historically, we’ve been… insular. The world’s savages, they call you—the people beyond the mountains—would corrupt our ‘perfect’ society.”

She withheld something there, I could tell.

“In the old days,” Engel continued. “When things were good, we ruled the world. It’s been hundreds of generations since then, unfortunately. Before the Age of the Dragons rolled around.”

“You’re really selling yourself to us well,” Piper muttered.

And maybe I would have joined her in her rational thinking… if not for how good the carrot looked when it was dangled right in front of me.

We could get frigging modern toilets!!

Too much excitement must have crept into my voice; enough for Daisy to jab her elbow into my side. “Ow!!”

“I can semi-read your thoughts, y’know,” Daisy said. “Made no effort to conceal what you wanted. Wasn’t calling everyone outside these people’s walls savages enough to deter you?”

No, it wasn’t. Not if there was a chance.

“Why are you here, then?” I asked.

Her answer was quiet. “I was… kicked out.”

That killed my mood instantly.

“O-Oh. I’m sorry.”

“…It was planned. But my sister is still in there. Always butting heads with the Elders about the future of the Mountain Elves, always boasting about our former glory.”

Her voice tightened. “I don’t know what happened to her. She…” She closed her green eyes. “It’s been close to six years now. She’s probably forgotten all about me.”

I wanted to believe everything she’d said.

But Daisy’s earlier glare lingered in my mind.

And the way Engelklein’s gaze kept dropping—just when the questions got sharpest—told me there was more to her story.

“I want to see Mama again. Above everything else,” she added. “I’m scared they punished her… for what she did.”

You’re not making this easy for me, woman!

I was about to clarify about what exactly her mother did that was so bad when the door creaked open behind us.

Martha stepped in, arms straining under the weight of what had to be five bulging bags of trash, wrapped head to toe in PPE. Her gaze flicked from the wreckage of Engel’s “meal” to me. Then primarily to Engel.

“Why is it,” Martha said slowly, “that whenever something happens these days, you’re somehow in the middle of it, Cotter?”