What spirit is so empty and blind that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed? How much more the beauty of the soul than the clay that houses it?

  ~Michelangelo

  Eirene awoke abruptly.

  Consciousness returned like a splash of icy water rippling through her mind, too fast to be anything but the result of a drug. Every sense clamored for attention, almost like the intensity of a new bonding.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, but she sensed it was quite a while. Although she appreciated that she didn’t awaken confused or slow-witted, she wondered what else the drug might be doing to her.

  Even before she glanced around at her surroundings, she embraced a fraction of her nevra core and loosened the connection between her soul and the body she wore. It insulated her against any other influences on her mind.

  She sat in the facetaker council chamber in the Suntara headquarters, strapped into a high-backed leather chair facing an enormous polished-wood table and six council members who sat quietly watching her. Not good.

  She had often reported to the entire council body so sitting before half of them didn’t intimidate her. What did shock her were the looks of cold, clinical detachment with which the elderly facetakers regarded her.

  They were old.

  That fact struck with startling force. One of the benefits of being a facetaker was abandoning an aging or sick body to take another life. All of the council members had always preferred young, healthy bodies, often abandoning them far earlier than Eirene usually did.

  Now they looked old, in their sixties or seventies. She couldn’t imagine what might have driven them to cling to these lives so long.

  They had expected her. The attack on her really was sanctioned by the council. Did they also understand Mai Luan’s true danger?

  Asoka sat closest to her right. The aged leader of the enforcers wore the same body she’d last seen him in prior to her previous imprisonment. He looked even grumpier than normal, although his anger did not seem directed toward her.

  He always looked grumpy, ever since the life he spent serving as a cardinal. It had been his efforts that had secured them permanent ownership of their headquarters.

  The fact that he had lived for centuries as a Buddhist monk had prepared him for a life of religious service, and by all accounts he had done a remarkable job. His contacts in the Vatican still benefited the council, but he seemed to still begrudge that life.

  John and Aline sat across the table from Asoka, but were turned away, talking quietly together. Zuri wore an overweight body whose sagging, ebony folds more than filled her chair. The diamond necklaces piled around her throat glittered with reflected light as she leaned forward, intense gaze locked on Eirene.

  Harald lounged beside her, grossly fat and bald. Shahrokh, the leader of the council, looked aged and frail. He sat at the head of the table, directly across from Eirene, and studied her with such an intense hunger it unnerved her.

  She had never positioned herself at odds with the council in any matter of import besides refusing to help them destroy her husband. For the first time, she feared what they planned for her.

  Mai Luan stepped into view beside her, dressed in a simple, white lab coat.

  “Welcome back.”

  “How . . . ?”

  Which question to ask first? How could Mai Luan be standing at ease in the council chamber? How had they not yet ordered her termination? How had the council broken millennia of tradition to allow the presence of the cui dashi? How . . .

  Mai Luan pressed a thick piece of tape over her mouth.

  “Now that you’ve chosen to join us, we can begin,” the slender woman said in a pleasant tone, belied by the ice in her gaze.

  “About time,” Shahrokh said with an irritated grunt. “Get on with it.”

  “Of course,” Mai Luan said with the tiniest of bows.

  The slender Chinese-American presented a demure, harmless face to the council. Could they not know what she was?

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Her physical form didn’t matter when she possessed an S-ranked Spirit. No doubt her body was at least A rank, depending on how long she’d worn that one. She could literally rip the heads off of every person in the room before enforcers stationed outside could begin to react.

  Eirene wanted to curse them all as fools. No matter what Gregorios might have done to them, allowing Mai Luan into their midst was pure lunacy.

  She didn’t bother to struggle to free her mouth. They clearly intended for Mai Luan to be present, and wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say.

  Mai Luan lifted a blocky metal helmet from under the table, trailing a dense bundle of wires. Its thick, raised faceplate looked a lot like an optometrist’s phoropter, but with jagged knobs and viewports.

  Whatever that thing was, Eirene didn’t want it on her head.

  She’d already boosted her recently-acquired new body to B rank, so she was strong, but the restraints holding her securely to the reinforced chair were designed to handle such strength.

  Despite her weak struggling against the restraining straps, Mai Luan placed the contraption over her head and strapped it down tight. She left the faceplate raised.

  “Comfy?” Mai Luan asked with a little smile. She turned Eirene’s chair just a little to allow her to glimpse a machine positioned behind her.

  It stood on steel casters, locked in place, and its simple rectangular base stood three feet tall and two feet wide. The shining steel of the outer shell was unmarked except for bright red letters emblazoned along one side that read Sotrun III.

  Atop the steel base sat a small monitor, turned away from Eirene. Tereza, also white-coated, sat on a stool, staring intently at the monitor, fingers tapping occasionally on the keys.

  It looked a lot like the machines Sarah had described from Alterego, the ones used in soul transfers, but adapted to use the helmet and Frankenstein phoropter faceplate.

  The situation was making less and less sense. She’d been hunting Tereza partially to learn the details of the machine and its supposed technology, and partially to gather intel on Mai Luan’s location.

  She hadn’t visited the council headquarters since her escape from Alterego. She’d hoped to learn from Tereza who might have been involved in orchestrating her capture beside Maerwynn, and if it was safe to return.

  Apparently it wasn’t.

  What made no sense was why Mai Luan would openly reveal the secret to them? Tereza was in league with Mai Luan, but was the council complicit also? It seemed hard to believe.

  Mai Luan flipped a switch on one side of the machine, and the helmet on Eirene’s head began to hum with electrical current. Eirene could accept that the council might order her dispossessed again as leverage against Gregorios.

  Despite the terror that thought triggered, she understood the reasoning. But why use the machine? Why allow Mai Luan into the chamber?

  Another white-coated tech, this one a young man, extracted a second helmet from a padded case. He plugged its wire bundle into another slot on the machine and placed the helmet onto an empty chair to Eirene’s left.

  Mai Luan placed a face coffin on the table. Eirene began to thrash in her chair despite her resolution to face her fate with calm. She didn’t doubt for a second that Gregorios would track her down and set her free again, but the sight of the face coffin filled her with panic.

  She couldn’t face that again. She tried to scream at the council to release her, to allow her to fight for her freedom, to issue a formal challenge, but the tape only allowed vague mumbling. She could never defeat Mai Luan, but their honor should require them to allow her to try.

  The cold gazes of the council members didn’t change. Mai Luan ignored her futile struggles. “Esteemed patrons, I thank you for agreeing to witness in person the first test of the completed prototype.”

  Eirene slowed her struggles to listen. Something else was going on, something unexpected. The council members listened eagerly, anticipation on their faces.

  “We will commence the experimental calibration utilizing this volunteer.” She made a mocking gesture toward Eirene.

  Then she flipped open the face coffin and extracted a soulmask. The male tech secured the soulmask into a web harness that he placed on the table in front of Eirene.

  She noted tiny runes inscribed onto each harness strap. They were utilizing hekha runes in the council chamber and no one cared?

  Asoka finally reacted, leaning forward and frowning at Mai Luan. Despite his age, his frown still carried a weight of danger few could ignore. “Can’t you leave your rounon rituals outside?”

  Mai Luan met his stare with perfect calm. “Certainly, if you’re volunteering to power the machine with the force of your soul instead?”

  Asoka huffed and muttered something grumpy under his breath, but settled back into his chair with no further complaint. Eirene watched him in shock.

  As head of the enforcers, he was a legendary fighter. He might not be able to hold his own against a cui dashi, but she’d never seen him so easily cowed. All he had to do was make a single gesture and the room would flood with security forces.

  He did gesture, but it was nothing more than a brushing motion of an impatient old man. “Get on with it then.”

  Mai Luan startled Eirene further by taking the seat beside her and slipping on the second helmet.

  Tereza drew the faceplate down over Eirene’s face and the jagged clamps dug into the flesh around her eyes and along her jaw, right along her soul points. It blocked out all light and the electrical hum intensified.

  Eirene fought down a fresh wave of fear and embraced her nevra core. She vowed by all the gods of her many lives that Mai Luan would not find her an easy target.

  Tereza leaned close and spoke softly. “Just relax. This will feel weird.”

  She wanted to shout curses accumulated from a dozen centuries at the woman. Did they really think she’d submit like a sheep? She’d fight with the same fury that had granted her victory over the mightiest of the hekha warriors of ancient Rome.

  A telltale ripple of power caressed her face as Tereza directed her nevron into the machine. Maybe that was why Mai Luan had donned the other helmet, as a way to combine forces with her against Eirene.

  Still, she would fight. Eirene braced herself for the first assault and prepared the full force of her nevron for an overwhelming counter-attack, but the assault never came.

  Something was wrong. Instead of the fiery heat of another’s power trying to rip her soul from her host body, the force humming against her skin vibrated with a secondary source.

  The dispossessed soul. Before she could even figure out how to fight it, a hole opened in her mind and sucked her consciousness down like a whirlpool.

  After a breathless moment of panic and soundless screaming, she awoke.

  In Japan. In 1944.