"I'm sorry?" Felix said, his expression blank.
"Why are you here?" Ananta repeated, watching his golden eyes shift and narrow with suspicion. "This isn't a coincidence."
Then- there! In his eyes; a strange spark of knowledge, not recognition, but rather, a thought, suppressed by will, hidden, but not well enough. Ananta felt, somehow, the understanding flood him, and he suddenly knew. His eyes sharpened, face deepening into something that seemed strangely out of place on his small child's face.
"You're going to meet with her. But-" and here, Ananta paused, reading the shock and thoughts flashing through Felix's face. "But you didn't mean to meet us."
Felix stared, his expression one of not quite shock but still surprise, and the girl elbowed Ananta's side.
"Ouch."
"Hey, how did you know that?" she hissed, eyes full of a strange kind of suspicious hope. "Are your memories… you know…"
Ananta shrugged. "No," he said simply, and the girl tilted back onto her heels, disappointed.
"How old are you?" Felix said, his voice tentative.
"I don't know," replied Ananta at the same time the girl said, "Six." The girl and Felix looked at him.
"How old are you?" Felix said again, his voice pushier, more urgent this time.
"I don't know," repeated Ananta, and looked calmly upwards, meeting Felix's eyes. "So what do you really want to say?"
"I…" Felix ran a hand through his hair. "Look, kid-"
"Call me Ananta."
At this, Felix inhaled sharply, eyes flashing gold. "How much do you remember?"
"Enough."
"Hey, ki- Ananta. Look, I…" Felix ruffled his hair again, the back flaring outwards in a manner reminiscent of a distressed bird. "Look, could you, uh, give me a minute? Just a minute. You stay right here."
The girl elbowed Ananta, hissing into his ear, "He's gonna call them."
Ananta shook his head. "He won't."
"How do you know?"
"Something about his eyes…"
The girl grabbed Ananta's shoulders, examining his face. "Hey, do you remember anything?" She shook him, his head jerking backwards like a puppet's. "Is it coming back?"
"Not if you do that…"
The sound of the car door slamming interrupted them. Felix stood over Ananta, his shadow enveloping both Ananta and the girl in shade. "Why are you here?" he said, his voice again taking on that odd chirpy quality.
"I don't-" Ananta started, and the girl interrupted, covering his mouth with her hand.
"Directions. Please."
Felix squinted at the girl suspiciously. "Who are you, kid?" he said, his voice tinted with an air of annoyance.
"She's-" was all Ananta could get out before the girl unraveled her bandages, the third eye glimmering out through the cracks. They all stood for a moment, the girl's eyes closed, fluttering, and the third eye blinking out at them. Ananta felt it again, that pull, and resisted, his mind fighting to stay present. From the corner of his eye, Ananta could see Felix, his face slack with the hypnosis of the eye, drawn like a moth to a flame. His arm extended, slowly, as if being used by some other being, towards the girl. Ananta tried to shout, to warn him, but it was too late; they were already being watched, used, like pawns, by, by-
The girl's eyes snapped open. She yanked the bandages back over her forehead in a fluid motion, and Felix's eyes seemed to sharpen, his hand falling jerkily to his side. He looked at the girl, a new kind of understanding shading his eyes. "How the hell did you escape?"
* * *
Lavender was angry. Mateo could tell from the way the door clipped shut, the way the papers on her desk shuffled together, down to the way she tied her hair. She was angry, angrier than he'd ever seen her - angry to the point of rage. At who, he was fairly certain he knew. She hadn't calmed down since the meeting. Her orders were short and clipped, and their once-daily meetings had increased to twice a day. Whenever they met, Mateo could see her eyes trailing to his neck - more specifically, at the glimmering white stone hung on the silver chain around it.
Today was a particularly bad day. Forget her office- he could tell how angry she was from the way the other employees avoided her wing of the facility. As he approached the door to her office, he could hear her, muttering under her breath. Tentatively, Mateo knocked, uncertainly, quietly.
"Come in," rang the voice from inside the room - her voice - and Mateo entered. Lavender didn't even look up from the papers on her desk. "What is it, boy?" she said, her voice stilted and falsely polite. "Did something else happen?"
"It seems Felix has been delayed," Mateo said, keeping his voice level and monotone. "He has reported the problem as 'car troubles', Lady."
Lavender snorted, sounding a less amused and more like an angry bull. "Car troubles. Why the fool insists on driving in that run-down piece of scrap metal I will never understand." She stacked the papers together and put them aside, leaning back in her chair, hair pulled back into an elegant ponytail that spilled over the sides of her chair. "So? How long?"
"He's told us, ah…" Mateo pulled the notepad out from his back pocket, a crisp yellow one, its edges straight, and examined the neat writing on it - his writing, of course. "'Maybe an hour, I dunno. Just tell her to wait for me, I'll get there eventually'. I believe he called the front desk about it."
Lavender clicked the pen in her hand and set it gingerly onto the desk. "Tell them to call that son of a bitch back and let him know that this is an emergency, please."
"Yes, madam. Would you like that rephrased?"
"No." Mateo scribbled the words into the notepad - son of a bitch, emergency - and closed it, bowing. "That is most certainly not all, Mateo, dear, where are you going?"
Mateo cursed silently and turned. "Yes, Lady?"
"I'll need you to buy some clothes for me."
"We have services for that, Lady," he said, voice stiffly formal. "I can let them know which clothes you would like to purchase-"
"I think I didn't make myself clear enough, Mateo. I need you to buy some clothes for me," Lavender said softly, and Mateo cringed inwardly.
"From what location?"
"Oh, you know the store," she said, scanning her desk. "The one we always get our clothes from."
Mateo paused, his pen hovering above his notepad. "'We'?"
Lavender looked up from her desk, a piece of paper in her hand. "Yes, we. Your clothes? For the meeting?"
"Ah. What should I…"
"Just a suit. Blue. But… Mateo," she said, looking up at him, "Make sure this time you look good."