Magpie

Leo Vance’s workspace was a cathedral of glass and silicon, a temple to the god of the clean line and the sans-serif font. Sunlight, filtered through the high-rise windows of the downtown loft, hit the brushed aluminum of his dual-monitor setup with a clinical precision that made Merlina’s eyes ache. It was too bright, too perfect. In the hidden nomadic communities where she’d grown up, light was a fickle thing—dappled through forest canopies or flickering from a guttering candle. Here, light was just another regulated resource.

“The thing about the B.M.R. rebrand,” Leo said, leaning back in his ergonomic chair, his fingers interlaced behind his head. He looked like every ‘innovator’ Merlina had ever seen on the posters: relaxed, successful, and utterly hollow. “Is that it’s currently too aggressive. The Bureau of Magical Regulation. It sounds like something from a history book about the Cold War. My contact there—a real shark named Director Halloway—wants something that feels more like… a community service. A lifestyle brand.”

Merlina sat on the high, backless stool he’d assigned her, her hands folded in her lap. The iron cuffs felt like ice against her skin, a constant reminder of the gravity of her situation. Below the cuffs, her wrists were thin, the magpie tattoo nearly hidden by the metal. The suppression collar hummed at the base of her throat, a low-frequency vibration that felt like a swarm of angry bees trying to nest in her marrow. It didn't just dampen her magic; it felt like it was trying to erase the very frequency of her soul.

“A lifestyle brand for slavery,” Merlina said, her voice dry and rasping. She hadn't had water since the processing center.

Leo winced, a flicker of genuine discomfort crossing his forgettable, pleasant face. He reached for a glass carafe on his desk and poured a measure of water into a crystal glass, sliding it toward her. “We don’t use that word, Merlina. We discussed this in the car. It’s ‘Compulsory Civic Contribution.’ And look, I know it’s hard. I do. But if we can make the aesthetics more… palatable, the treatment of people—of witches—might actually improve. If the public sees you as part of a functioning society rather than a threat to be contained, the policy will follow the design.”

He actually believed it. Or, more accurately, he needed to believe it. Merlina watched him, her gray eyes sharp and analyzing. She saw the soft hands that had never known a day of hard labor, the trendy casualwear that cost more than a witch’s life was worth on the open market. He was a man who lived in the cracks of the system, decorating the walls of the prison and calling it a renovation.

“You want me to help you pick the right shade of blue for the collars?” she asked, her voice laced with a lethal irony.

Leo didn’t look at her. He turned back to his screens. “I want your ‘intuitive’ input. Witches have a different relationship with symbols. Patterns, geometry—you see things we don't. I’m working on the new seal for the Atlantic Resettlement District. I feel like the current one is too… heavy.”

He clicked a button, and a massive graphic filled the right-hand monitor. It was a stylized eagle gripping a bundle of wands—the wands were snapped in half. Merlina felt a surge of cold fury, a spike of magic that hit the suppression collar like a physical blow. The device flared hot, a sharp electric sting lancing into her neck. She gasped, her hand flying to the collar, her fingers fumbling with the smooth, unresponsive surface.

“Easy, easy,” Leo said, his voice dropping to that hushed, conspiratorial tone he’d used earlier. He stood up, moving toward her with a look of frantic concern. “Don’t fight it. If the sensors detect a spike in magical output, it’ll trigger a Level Two shock. Just… breathe. Think of something boring. Think of… think of the color gray.”

Merlina forced her breathing to slow. She closed her eyes, imagining the shadows in the corners of the room stretching out to swallow the light. Slowly, the heat from the collar receded, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache. When she opened her eyes again, Leo was standing close—too close. He smelled like expensive coffee and soap.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I forgot how sensitive those things are.”

“You forgot,” she repeated, her voice a jagged edge.

He retreated a step, his existential cowardice resurfacing as he returned to the safety of his desk. “Let’s try something else. Look at this.”

He pulled up a different file. This one wasn't a logo. It was a 3D rendering of an urban redevelopment project. It looked like a utopia—sleek white towers, hanging gardens, and transparent transit tubes winding through the air. But as Merlina stared at the screen, something felt… off. The perspective was too perfect. The shadows didn't fall quite right. It looked like a world made of math, not of matter.

“This is a contract for a group called Veritas,” Leo said, his voice dropping even lower. He kept his eyes on the screen, but his hands were trembling slightly. “They’re a defense contractor. They handle the back-end infrastructure for the Districts. I was supposed to be designing the UI for their administrative portals, but I… I found some legacy code in the asset folders they sent me.”

“Code?” Merlina asked, her brow furrowing.

Leo clicked through a series of folders, his movements frantic. He opened a file that looked like a jumbled mess of text and symbols. To any other designer, it might have looked like a corrupted image file. But as Merlina leaned in, her eyes widened.

It wasn't code. Not exactly. It was a sequence of symbols that looked hauntingly familiar—the way a dream looks when you try to remember it upon waking. They were sigils, but translated into a language of logic and light.

“I ran a diagnostic on the environment renders,” Leo whispered, leaning in so close she could see the vacant, haunted look in his eyes. “I thought there was a bug in the rendering engine. The physics were glitching. Water wouldn't flow downhill in the simulation models. But then I looked at the satellite data they gave me for the actual city—our city. New York. D.C. It’s the same, Merlina.”

He pointed to a specific section of the code. “This is a recursive loop for a recycling protocol. It’s not for data. It’s for… identities. Souls. Everything we see, everything we touch… it’s a skin. A user interface. I’ve been designing graphics for a prison I didn’t know I was in.”

Suddenly, the air in the room seemed to vibrate. The light from the window didn't just hit the desk; it seemed to stutter, a frame-rate drop in reality itself. Merlina turned her head toward the corner of the room, where the shadows should have been.

There was a shimmer in the air. A distortion, like heat rising from asphalt. It had no shape, and yet it felt like a presence. It was a pocket of non-existence, a hole in the world.

“Leo,” Merlina breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs. “Do you see that?”

Leo looked in the direction she was pointing, his face pale. “See what? I don’t see anything.”

But the shimmer moved. It drifted across the room, passing through a designer lamp as if it weren't there. As it passed in front of a mirror on the wall, the reflection didn't show the loft. For a fraction of a second, Merlina saw a glimpse of something else—a dark, cramped space filled with glass cylinders. Inside the cylinders, pale, fleshy shapes floated in a greenish fluid. Thousands of them, stretching off into an infinite, mechanical dark.

Then, the reflection snapped back. The shimmer was gone.

“The Echo,” Merlina whispered, the name coming to her from a place she didn't recognize.

“What?” Leo asked, his voice high and thin. He was staring at her now, his ‘good owner’ mask completely shattered. “What did you see?”

“A glitch,” she said, her voice trembling. “I saw the truth behind the UI, Leo.”

Before he could respond, the doorbell chimed—a cheerful, electronic sound that felt like a scream in the quiet of the loft. Leo jumped, his hand knocking over the water glass. The liquid spilled across the desk, seeping into the keyboard.

“I’m not expecting anyone,” Leo said, his face draining of what little color it had left.

He walked to the intercom, his movements jerky. The screen flickered to life, showing the hallway outside his door. Standing there was a man in a severe, dark suit. He was tall and gaunt, his skin the color of old parchment. He stood perfectly still, his hands encased in black leather gloves.

But it was his eyes that stopped Merlina’s breath. They were solid black. No whites, no pupils. Just two voids where a human gaze should be.

“Mr. Vance,” the man said. His voice was a perfect, chilling monotone, devoid of any inflection. “I am from the Bureau’s Audit Division. There has been a reported discrepancy in your recent data uploads. I believe you have a… creative assistant on the premises who requires a system check.”

Leo looked back at Merlina, his eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the fear of the government. He looked at the screen, at the man with the black eyes—The Caretaker—and then back at the girl he had bought to ease his conscience.

“I… I’ll be right there,” Leo stammered.

He turned to Merlina, his voice a frantic hiss. “Go to the bedroom. Stay there. Don't make a sound. If he finds out what I’ve been looking at—if he sees the files—we’re both going to be deleted.”

Merlina didn't argue. She stood up, her legs feeling like lead. As she hurried toward the back of the loft, she felt the hum of the collar intensify, but this time it wasn't just a dampener. It felt like a tether, a line connecting her to the vast, terrifying machinery that hummed beneath the floorboards of the world. She realized then that there was no such thing as a 'good home' in Hell. There were only different levels of the cage, and the bars were made of more than just iron.