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Quanxi’s never met her, but she’s seen her. Over and over. At the mouth of the curving metal river of spiraling stairs, through the streaky fogged morning window, on top of the roof with her arms stretching into the set of the reddened sun, braid bound tight on the underside of her head, saintlike. A figure, a silhouette, a shadow, a body. Never anything truly human, because Quanxi connects humanity to those parts vulnerable, dove-white in their ability to bear marks, and there’s not a single bit of Makima that looks soft.
She’s never met Makima face-to-face, never seen her red hair with the naked eye. It’s only when Quanxi feels the hairs stand up on the back of her neck and her mind begins to race that the scenery in front of her eye disappears and is replaced by a series of razor-sharp images. Descending the stairs, Makima raising her head to gaze at Quanxi; passing by the window, the blurred upper half of Makima’s body pausing; pushing open the door to the roof, Makima’s side profile awash in gold. Then her, turning, something on her lips—before Quanxi can see it, she’s broken out of her trance and she’s going back up the stairs, backing away from the window, leaving the door shut tight.
Goosebumps. Summer, winter, spring, fall—it doesn’t matter. When Quanxi knows Makima’s in her future, she shivers. A shot of ice surging down her spine. It’s enough hearing her name all over the agency, sinking into the plaster, hushed and reverent. Makima, Miss Makima, Makima-san. Makima won’t like that. Ask Makima for permission first. Is Makima-san here? Has Makima left?
Makima. Quanxi could paint her by this point, but her hands are too cold.
❥
The clock is ticking. Makima has them hung all over the agency, in every single room, along the hallways, round and inescapable. It’s slunk into Quanxi’s mind, the constant and steady tick-tock, tick-tock, to the point where it’s even entered her dreams. She steps into the hazy dream-agency and hears distinctly the dream-clock first, tick—ing.
Sometimes she thinks Makima has to know. Otherwise she wouldn’t torture Quanxi like this. She has to know that Quanxi can see just slightly into the future, ten seconds, fifteen, thirty, at maximum sixty seconds. One minute. Hardly an advantage if you only want to move through life with calm hands, but for someone like Quanxi, it’s everything.
There’s a limit to it, of course—further than even the scarcity of sixty seconds. The heavens are fickle in their gifts but still know restraint. Quanxi sacrifices real time to see time not yet arrived; she gives up her current vision to see what she might see in a revolution of the second hand, a possible future just beginning to settle into stone.
Picture a number line: Quanxi stands at point zero. She closes her eye. For the next sixty seconds, she sees nothing in front of her. At a point sixty seconds away, her vision begins. She lives in darkness for a minute; in exchange, she lives the next minute twice.
In the heat of the moment, when her sword’s out and her body low, there’s no time, ironically, to look. She has to stay in the moment, focus on the deep bend of her knee, avoid the rough knuckles skating past her cheek, predict every possible impact from every possible direction. But before that, up to sixty seconds before the other person moves, she can see it all. And change it all.
So Quanxi thinks Makima has to know, even though Quanxi’s never told a soul about the seconds spinning through her irises, that every tick of the clock is as loud as a shout, an alarm blaring. Like it’s saying use it, the Foresight. Use it or she’ll come. Use it or you’ll see what’s on her mouth, not with your mind but with your real eye. It’ll seize not the strong red muscle in your chest but the tender skin running from the underside of your upper arm down to the valley of your stomach.
But the more Quanxi uses it, she’s sure the more certain Makima will be. The longer she sees her, but never meets her. She’ll know.
❥
The only time Quanxi can’t rely on intuition, instinct, or Foresight is when she’s sleeping, so for all her precautions against Makima, it’s all useless when she hasn’t yet awoken, still caught in the dark of shut eyelids. And so of course the first time she meets Makima it’s like this: the sides of her sheets are cool from February’s blue nights, her lonely pair of legs unable to keep warmth in the bed. In the fast yet gradual process of surfacing from sleep, consciousness breaking through the black water, she’s weighed back into her mattress by a pressure on her neck. A hand is around her throat.
Quanxi blinks, gaze slowly traveling from the white-sleeved arm up to Makima’s face. She’s partly blocking out the weak seven a.m. light filtering through the window. There’s nothing on her mouth yet.
“I’d hoped you’d come to me first,” she says.
Quanxi says nothing. She keeps her eye on Makima, mind already elsewhere. Bed’s cold; Pingtsi, Long, Cosmo, and Tsugihagi weren’t here last night. They’re away. She doesn’t sleep with blades beside bare skin, but at least one of her swords is within arm’s reach. Makima’s closer, though. If Quanxi moved anything below her neck right now, Makima’d probably lean forward and casually crush her larynx into her spine. Easy, still declared a good nightmare by the white morning light.
“You can speak, you know.” Makima lowers her voice, leans down. Applies a little more pressure. “I haven’t heard your voice before.”
When Quanxi forces air through her throat, her voice is still heavy with sleep, ragged at the edges. “What do you want?”
“To have a conversation with you.”
“You need to sneak into my house and choke me in my sleep to do that?” Quanxi talks like her mind isn’t filled with motion shots of piercing metal, blood spurting, isn’t filled with pictures of her splayed, unmoving body under Makima’s unerring hand. Like she’s only shivering from the cold.
Makima tilts her head, almost like she’s considering repenting. “But, dear Quanxi, you’d only keep running if I came at any other time. Would you not?”
Quanxi keeps herself very, very still. Even the rise and fall of her chest is too much movement. She sucks in a breath, imagines a room without Makima, imagines killing Makima, imagines making it out through the door alive. Lets it out. Realizes with no small amount of horror that even though she’s not in the agency right now, and there’s not a single analog clock in her home, she hears ticking. Tick,
tock. Tick,
Makima has a watch wrapped around her wrist. Quanxi’s sure she’s certain—
“I had no choice,” Makima says reasonably. “I need you, Quanxi. This assignment’s for just you and me.”
“You’ve got something on me, haven’t you.”
Makima smiles, slow and syrupy, and this is what Quanxi’s always missed, what’s she’s always cut off before she could see: the devastating curve of her lips. Even the strongest sword forged from hell bends. “More than money. I’ve got you at both ends. Your girls are gone, but if you come with me, I’ll give you more than them. Far more.”
“What?” Quanxi grits out.
“Some of me.”
And like she’s said something truly great instead, like a billion yen or her freedom, Quanxi says Fine. She doesn’t use Foresight, doesn’t dare to let the Makima with her hand around her throat out of her real eye, but she knows Makima’s presence has solidified into her future, concrete dried up, too late to escape. Her stomach clenches.
She’s out the door alive, but at what cost?
❥
First rule of a heist: you have a plan. Multiple is better. Second rule: you don’t do it alone. Quanxi’s exempt from this second rule, with Foresight being better than having three lookouts, but she still runs with others. Her girls, mainly, and sometimes with whoever’s available at the agency that week—revenge boy, goatee guy, Himeno. Piercings boy is decent, never loses his cool. Sometimes Kishibe; they know each other too well, can read each other’s intentions and next steps like there’s a neural link between them. She doesn’t like it, but it’s true. And Li Jun or Hairan, when they visit from China. There’s no shortage of high-powered thieves to pick for partners.
So why her? Why does Makima need her, and only her?
“You’re the best,” Kishibe says. He looks more worn than usual today under sickly cafeteria lights, but he hasn’t accumulated any new scars. Not that Quanxi can see, anyway.
Quanxi stares him down. They both know that isn’t an answer. Quanxi’s “the best” is simply a claim to a title that’s never been decided. Never has a method of decision. Who’s the quietest, the fastest, the most ruthless, the richest? There’s no International Crime Association in charge of handing out trophies.
“That’s what I’d say as a former partner.” Kishibe shrugs, swirls his terrible foamy coffee with the plastic straw. “As just me, I’d say it’s because it’s you.” He takes a long sip. “But never believe the words of a guy madly in love with you, yeah?”
Love makes you a liar, but Kishibe’s no reason to lie to her, never has.
Quanxi leaves the table with her drink untouched. As she descends the stairs to the ground floor, slow, she uses Foresight twice. The future doesn’t only have one path—it splinters over and over, every decision and mistake and accident opening a new possibility. Quanxi usually only chooses to see one, the one that aligns with the decisions she’ll make in the next minute, but she can see multiple, too. Split sixty seconds in half and she’ll see two different futures, one after the other.
When she looks now, foot landing hard against the steps, she sees Makima first. Thirty seconds and she’ll reach the ground floor, where Makima will turn around and invite her into her office for the first time. Thirty seconds and she’ll stop right where she is, turn around and head back to the table where Kishibe’s still sipping his pathetic little iced coffee alone, and ask him to cover for her while she makes a run for it.
She thinks about her girls and keeps going down. Thinks about stepping real close to Makima, where she can see the line of her neck disappear into her collar; thinks about getting more than her girls back. Getting some of Makima, gold and red, treasure and blood. Mantra of a thief.
She keeps going down. When the tip of her boot meets carpet, Makima turns around, back straight like a soldier’s, face open like a river-run canyon. The doorknob twists.
“Come on in,” she says. “You and me, we’re going to steal like never before.”
❥
The plan, as it goes, seems relatively standard. Makima sits behind her mahogany desk and Quanxi sits across from her as she explains all the pieces, efficient without space for interjection. Quanxi’s sure there’s something else, something Makima’s holding back, but she doesn’t care. As long as Makima takes care of it herself and doesn’t fuck up the operation, she’s got nothing to say. It’s better, even, that she doesn’t know. Just a few diamonds, a painting, and they’re out. Standard. She’s been doing this for decades.
Quanxi tries to call her girls a few days before she’s meant to set out, knowing that they most likely won’t pick up, and they don’t. She writes them a letter instead, in case this is the one-millionth alternate universe in which Makima releases them in the event of Quanxi’s death, and checks over her short will to make sure everything’s up to date.
No one who works this job should have a will, but the longer they keep living, the more that weighs them down. Takes them away from what drew them here in the first place: life without ties to the past or the future. Quanxi reads her will again, then adds another line. If this is her last assignment, then before she’s lowered into the coffin or incinerated to ashes she wants her eye removed. That way the last remnants of sight left in her will be in her mind, cast forever a short sixty seconds into the future.
The phone rings. She picks up.
“Quanxi, dear,” says Makima, amusement lilting her tone. “I’m here if you want company.”
“I don’t,” Quanxi says shortly. She thinks about hanging up, fingers twitching.
“My company, or any at all?”
“Yours,” she says clearly, but Quanxi isn’t really clear, not anymore.
Makima’s soft laughter drifts through the speaker. “Then call me when you do, or when there’s nothing left to entertain you at night. You know how to reach me.”
She does. Quanxi doesn’t use Foresight in relation to Makima anymore, knows that in the near future she’s an inevitability, that she’ll see her tomorrow, braid trailing down her back. Everything neat as the sight of her tears Quanxi open from throat to stomach, the length of a perfect slash.
❥
When did she stop being afraid of Makima? When did she start drinking in her presence like clean air after a kill? The fear’s not all gone, but as Makima takes her hand and leads her into the backseat of the car, she begins to forget. The buzz of a job kicking off begins to set in. She shakes it out, flexes her fingers, slides the black gloves on. Makima’s too close, too real. Quanxi meets Kishibe’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Your car’s too flashy,” she says to him, just to distract herself.
“It needs to be.” Kishibe’s eyes cut away, keeps his hands on the wheel. “Won’t match me otherwise.”
Things that match. Kishibe and the confidence sewn into him, sure, but Quanxi and Makima? Makima acts like they do, so much so that Quanxi can feel herself slipping, starting to believe her. That she’s red and gold too. They’re on the expressway now, far past sunset at midnight, and Quanxi’s forgetting that getting stained in color is the worst for a thief looking for a sightless getaway.
She glances at Makima’s unreadable face, thinks, I miss my girls. She was never afraid with them. Anticipation never tasted so strange. Makima reads her expression and lifts a hand, ghosting a finger past the line of Quanxi’s jaw and letting it rest underneath her chin.
“They’re your girls, but I’m not one of them,” she says. The window’s rolled down, but her words stay in the car, refusing the whistling wind’s passage. “I’m just Makima. Right?”
And she is. Just Makima, only Makima. Not Quanxi’s, never Quanxi’s, but still the specter taking up half Quanxi’s mind, still the future no longer changeable. Quanxi gets drunk on her, guard down even as Makima’s hand comes to curl around her throat again, palm against her pulse, even as Makima says, “This is real love, girl, recognize it now. You’ve never had it before.”
Even as she disagrees, thinking that whatever ugly thing’s slithering on in between them couldn’t be anything more than what Quanxi has for her girls, she doesn’t deny it. Because she’s suddenly reminded of techniques she’d learned back in China, when she was climbing her way into contention for “the best”—techniques that needed more brute strength than agility, sheer force instead of calculated angles. In theory, someone like Quanxi shouldn’t have been able to pull them off. In practice, when it was Quanxi—and because it was her—it was possible.
And it’s still Quanxi, so a love terrifying, a love stripping her of her Foresight, rooting her vision in the here and now, a love that shouldn’t be called love, can still be consumed by her. Can still light her up from the inside out.
❥
The car arrives at their destination, a collector’s mansion enclosed by a tall, spiked fence. The lush yard is lit in the soft glow of night lamps, but there’s no light to be seen coming from the house. As Quanxi checks her equipment one last time, gives herself a once-over, Kishibe leans an elbow out the window.
“‘Cause it’s her,” he says, “I was always gonna lose.”
Makima’s already waiting by the gate. Always waiting, knowing by now that Quanxi’ll come. Quanxi laughs in his face. “You were never in the running to begin with, Kishibe. Take your car and go already.”
Kishibe quirks a grin. “Don’t drown.” And he’s going, and Quanxi’s not looking back as she heads towards Makima, as she scales the grand, intricate gate fast with Makima on her heels. And they’re over the fence and into the yard, landing soundlessly on tended-after grass, and it’s begun.
❥
In a heist, a job, there’s just two things to do: act, and wait. Time it according to the plan, make modifications as needed. You’re thinking nonstop the entire time, brain running on overdrive, assessing every new sight and sound. In the early stages, the mind tires more quickly than the body. Wait—dash, duck, hold yourself around the corner, behind the door, between the shelves—wait, wait— act.
When Quanxi waits, she looks. Four possible futures, fifteen seconds each. This corridor’s automatic light is on, meaning someone’s just passed by. If she keeps going down, she’ll run into a sleepy figure. That corridor’s clear, but it leads to another kitchen. And that one to an ostentatious dining hall, unlit chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. And this one—she can’t see that far. She moves further, touches the thin mask covering her mouth.
They split as soon as they slipped through the window, Quanxi to the west wing and Makima to the east. If there’s a way to break into the lower level—it wasn’t in the blueprints they’d studied, but there’s still a high chance of it existing—Makima’ll go in. Quanxi’s responsible for the upper floors. She has to cover more ground, but it’s easier. Quanxi doesn’t like being underground, the slightest claustrophobia gripping her whenever she goes down into the earth.
The halls are narrow, but they’re wide enough for Quanxi. It’s all still standard, going smoothly; she takes note of the painting’s location, quietly mounted in a small bookroom on the second floor. The tulle-clad girl in oil paints stares out from underneath the bright glare of Quanxi’s flashlight, eyes wide and cheeks rosy as if she’s just heard a scandalous secret, soft white hand gently held by a scaly red clawed thing, talons glinting like teeth in the shine of the girl’s halo, the rest of its body disappeared into the abyss of a background.
Quanxi stares back, eye narrowing. The painting’s disconcerting in a way she can’t pin down. Is it the serenity emanating from the girl, or her trusting hand in a devil’s claw? Or perhaps it’s the understanding in the wide blue eyes that follow Quanxi even as Quanxi moves by, as if she knows there’s a nameless monster in the dark, that she’s holding the monster’s hand, that her lack of fear is the most unsettling thing of all.
The flashlight clicks off. Quanxi moves on to the third floor, footsteps ballet-light. She’ll grab the painting when she comes back down; it’s too unwieldy to carry around. She tells herself this, but she still sees the girl watching her. In one version of the near future Foresight shows her, she returns to the second floor and rips off her gloves, sending her fist into the heart of the painting. The hairline cracks are torn apart.
She swallows, feels it hit the bottom of her stomach. Keeps moving. The jewels are next, and the clock’s still ticking.
Gemstones can be difficult, draining. If the owner’s just simple rich, they might toss it into their jewelry box that’s a whole foot deep, mixed up with a hundred other glittering bangles and necklaces and brooches. It’s just another ornament to them. In that case, Quanxi would have to sort through it all, patiently untangle the mess. But it’s a collector this time, so the diamonds should be displayed somewhere clean and solitary, shored up behind transparent security. The result of the cross between the possessive jealousy of hoarding beauty and the desire to show off that beauty, the pride at having owned it.
At the intersection of two hallways, the right side lights up. Quanxi turns herself into smoke. Waits, waits. A slender man stumbles by in his plain teal pajamas, gait unsteady with sleep. He hovers there, swaying a little. Quanxi—waits. If she’s learned just one thing from Makima, it’s this.
He hunches over. If he looked to the side from this exact position, he’d catch the outline of Quanxi’s body rigid against the wall, slightly too tall to fully dissolve into shadow. Quanxi has her sword’s sheath unstrapped, but the blood’ll be cumbersome to get out of the carpet. It’ll be a further delay.
But instead he presses a hand to his mouth and gags, vomit gushing out of his mouth and spilling through his fingers, splashing down his front. “I should’ve,” he rasps to himself between heaves, entire body shuddering, “fired her for undercooking my meat. Tomorrow…morning. Gone.”
Quanxi doesn’t even feel a lick of nausea, covering the left hallway in a few short strides and turning the corner. They’ve got to be on this floor—there’s only seven rooms left if the blueprint was right. Three are cut off by the sick proprietor’s mess in the intersection, but those should be his bedchambers. One more, if she’d kept heading forward instead of entering left—the bathroom, possibly. If she bet right, then the stones will be in one of the remaining three.
Foresight, forty-five.
The first opens to a bedroom and the lights flicker on without warning, startling the lone woman—the wife, sleeping separately from her husband?—in the king-sized bed. She’s bleary-eyed until she sees Quanxi, assassin-like in a mask and a sword across her back. She shrieks. This one’s gone.
The second is an extraordinarily short square room covered from head to toe with paintings all featuring hands. Hands opened, opening, fingers curling, palms pinching. Holding fruit, cameras, other hands, brushes, crumpled fabric. Hands covering eyes, fingertips against the brow bone, knuckles on the bridge of a nose, pupils flashing from between crevices. Some are missing fingers or have too many, four or three or six or seven. In the center of the room where the two diagonals overlap is a circle. If one stood there and raised up their arms to the low ceiling, they could add their hands to the room. The vision ends before Quanxi reaches the circle, and this one’s gone too. She’d rather go seven stories underground.
Third is the one she’s been looking for, the only lights in the room the concentrated beams glaring down at gems in display columns. Quanxi lurches out of the vision and into motion, past the sleeping wife, past the room of hands. Picks the rudimentary lock in seconds and she’s in, her real eye landing on the unmistakable gleam of polished precious stone.
She shuts the door behind her and begins to search, heartbeat beginning to thunder in her chest. This is what they’re after, every single one of them, every partner she’s ever ran with: the thrill leading up to the snatch, the ecstasy of having freed it, the pure lightning strike of power of holding in the hand something worth more than a limb, more than a life to someone.
The exhibits are unlabeled, but Quanxi has the appearance of the diamonds memorized. She finds the first, a princess-style strand cut in the shape of teardrops, lying expectant on its white altar. The alarm wire snaps between her fingers, and she blots out the fiery sparks without flinching. The necklace is lifted by a gloved hand and sealed spotlessly into an airtag bag. Quanxi tucks the bag into the inner pocket of her vest and continues.
Next is a pair of triple drop earrings, three delicate pale-blue circles linked by a needle-thin gold chain. Bag, sealed, pocket.
There’s one more, but it should be a necklace—Quanxi’s passed that section already, and she’s about to double back to search again when she hears the ticking. So faint she thinks it’s a trick of the imagination at first, her mind filling in the void of external sound, but as she advances it grows louder, becomes undeniable. She tips her head up, but she can’t see if there’s anything mounted on the wall. Normal people don’t hang clocks in every room, she reminds herself. Only someone like Makima would.
She finds that the room is deeper than she thought, a nearly-unnoticeable opening leading into nothing but black. Quanxi tries to step in as silently as she can, but the motion sensors detect her and the display lights flicker on. A persistent red light shining from the upper corner tells her there’s a camera watching. It’s fine—she’ll be long gone before anyone remembers to go through the recordings.
The last necklace, a matinee-length pendant, is easily spotted, but the ticking tugs on Quanxi’s ears. There, a few display cases down, is the source: a gold watch with a red face, classic and simplistic in design. It’s almost out of place amongst so many jewels, but it has a magnetism. She leans close. It reads 1:02, gold minute and hour hands thinner than the crescent of her trimmed nails. She’s ahead of schedule.
She means to move on. She does, but the visceral memory of Makima’s hand on her throat, around her neck just hours earlier rises up. Seizes her mind. There was no tick-tock then; Makima wasn’t wearing a watch. Quanxi draws an oval on the cold glass, then flattens her palm against it.
If she brought this watch to Makima, breaking the rule of take no more than you came here for, what would Makima say? Would she punish Quanxi, or would she say Good girl, always thinking of me. You’re beyond my expectations.
1:03. She’s crazy. She’s crazy and she wants Makima to slip it onto her wrist, hold all of Quanxi and her technique-laden body down, say I know everything about you and you’re never going to know me, and this is a real love. Wants Makima to say it twice, once in her mind and once into her mouth.
This is the first time Quanxi’s felt guilty about taking treasure that isn’t hers, but she’s guilty for herself. She’s guilty for losing.
But it hits her hard, too, as the watch comes to rest against the stretch of skin between the stomach and the heart, where the ribs slope up into an arrowhead. The ecstasy, the rapture. She almost forgets to lift the pendant as she leaves, nerves alight. This is what Makima does to her. Even when she isn’t here, isn’t physical, she’s living in Quanxi.
Wait. Wait. Plan’s still midway. She needs to stick.
The wife still sleeps. At the intersection, the puddle of vomit has been half-absorbed into the floor, but the collector himself has disappeared. He hasn’t called anyone to clean up the mess, either. Just to be safe, Quanxi ventures right, casts Foresight; he’s curled up in his bedroom beneath a mound of blankets, lips colorless and trembling. She goes down to the second floor.
She doesn’t linger on the girl in the painting when she unhooks it from the wall, doesn’t think any longer on which subject’s the true monster. It’s wrapped, then zipped into a rectangular bag and tucked below Quanxi’s arm. There’s nothing that can remain a threat after being sealed away.
Ground floor, now. Makima isn’t here, but Quanxi’s found everything they came here for. She lifts a hand to her earpiece, about to signal the three short beeps that would tell Makima she’s done and ready to move out, then hesitates. Lets her hand drop.
She has time, she’s fast. Listen to the tick, tock saying so. Kishibe’s not here yet, and Quanxi makes her second bad decision of the night: she goes to find Makima. She’s in headfirst. She wants to see her.
❥
In the east wing, the path to the underground is easily found. Light clambers out along all four edges of the doorway down. Quanxi places her hand on the doorknob, imagines Makima’s hand overlapping with hers. Twists it open. The hinges creak.
The sound shocks her out of herself, one that isn’t her own breathing or the ticking of the watch, and prevents her from immediately heading down the lit wooden stairs. Fear reopens its eye in her throat. What’s taking Makima so long that Quanxi’s went up and down three floors and she still hasn’t come out?
Foresight, sixty seconds.
Quanxi goes down the stairs. Traveling down the bright corridor, she barely walks for ten seconds before she finds Makima’s crouched form, back facing Quanxi. There’s not a single hair out of place. Quanxi’s about to come closer, reach for Makima when she sees what Makima’s crouching over.
A boy, lying prone against the ground, face bloodless. His blond hair is filthy. But as Makima whispers something to him, he somehow summons the strength to raise up his hand. There, then, is where all the blood’s gone. It gushes out of the stump where his index finger should be, runs down the back of his hand and down his forearm in rivulets. Red splatters.
Makima says something again. His eyes are fixed on her without an ounce of fear, only worship. He raises his hand higher. Makima runs a finger along his arm, collects his blood on her fingertip, lowers her head and—
Sixty seconds up.
Quanxi makes a too-loud sound, a punched-out gasp. It’s about to happen. In the next sixty—no, fifty-seven, fifty-six seconds, Makima is going to—
Wait. Wait. This isn’t according to plan, this is no standard, far from it, but Quanxi’s better than this. They don’t deal in living humans, ever. Let one live and they’re a forever-growing liability, trapping a piece of unseen past inside them. You never know what cornered animals with a memory are capable of. And even if they did deal in living people, they wouldn’t do what Makima’s doing. Quanxi’s hand drifts to her sword.
But what is she doing? Quanxi should…check. Makima could’ve been helping the boy, never mind the way he looked at her and the freshness of his wound. Still, Quanxi should check first. Her hand falls.
Forty-five seconds ‘til where the first Foresight cut off. Her head is throbbing. Again, this time thirty for thirty.
She’s hurtling down the corridor, walls a blur. Makima is whispering. The boy is raising his hand. Blood is bubbling and dripping. And Quanxi bends down slow and watches, air around her thickening into sludge and trapping her limbs, as Makima lowers her head and lets her lips come near the boy’s middle finger. Quanxi doesn’t see her lips actually touch skin; instead, there’s a golden breath of light blooming outwards. Caught inside it, the tip of the boy’s finger begins to blister, to peel apart, the whorls on the skin flattening into scorched plains. Flesh crumbles, fat evaporates. White, white bone is exposed to open air for the first time, but that too vaporizes instantly in the onslaught of Makima’s nearness.
Knuckle to knuckle to empty space. When Makima finally leans back—and though it’s only been five seconds, Quanxi swears even the ticking of the watch has delayed itself—there are only three fingers left on the boy’s hand. Ring finger, pinky, thumb. He’s looking at her like she kissed him.
Makima isn’t looking back at him. Her head is turning—
Thirty seconds up, fifteen left until the real Makima lowers her head. Quanxi blinks—fourteen—inhales hard—thirteen, twelve, eleven—lets it out, and knows she won’t make it in time. Because she is terrible, and trained, and knows precisely how much of an advantage she has, she doesn’t try. She struggles instead as the seconds tick by, if she should. If she should kill Makima.
Because she wants to, she realizes, desperately. She wants to kill Makima to eliminate the fear, wants to kill Makima for the fight-or-flight she causes. Wants to kill Makima ‘cause she’s not just shaking loose all the rivets Quanxi’s used to fasten her life down, she’s distorting Quanxi, leaving openings she’s spent years closing up. She hates it, losing control, and hates how every time Makima comes close she doesn’t care anymore. Is unable to care anymore. She wants to see her. See her, and kill her, and kiss her. It makes her sick, her helpless, frozen hands. Perhaps she should’ve surrendered to the room of hands on the third floor. Perhaps she should’ve stayed in Nanjing, where the summers run devilishly hot.
She wants to kill Makima. The lovely girl in the painting, and she the monster lured into her trap, already half-faded.
She’s given into too many of her wants tonight. Quanxi closes her eye. The boy’s finger is gone already. Because she is terrible, and trained, and this is just the latest war she has to fight inside herself, she stays still. Foresight, sixty. Divide it in half, two for thirty.
Down the stairs, through the corridor. Quanxi’s sword comes out of its sheath as she runs, comes down in an unrelenting arc at the back of Makima’s head. Makima turns, mouth opening—
And that’s it. Quanxi jerks out of the vision, nearly losing her balance at the top of the stairs. It’s only been twenty-five seconds—there’s still five more to go. What—
Second trial. Down the stairs, through the corridor. Quanxi’s slightly slower this time, sword still inside its sheath. Blood rushes into her palms. Her center of gravity’s low, her footsteps inaudible, even her breathing gone. Her hand shoots forward at the delicate slip of skin at Makima’s neck. Makima turns, mouth opening—
That’s it, again. Twenty-eight seconds. Last two, stolen. Quanxi grips the railing for support, chest heaving. That’s never happened before. If her Foresight ends early, it’s always of her own volition. But before the blade sliced Makima’s jugular open, before the side of her hand smashed into the vertebrae shielding Makima’s spinal cord, she was shut out. Tick,
tock. Tick,
She’s shaking so hard she can hardly recognize herself, constancies spilling out of her like a pearl necklace snapped. Through a layer of fabric, the watch burns her clean through, leaves a medallion hole where her heart collides into her stomach. Her boots land louder than gunshots as she staggers down the stairs.
Through the corridor, and Makima’s turning, mouth opening, not a speck of blood on her.
“Quanxi, darling,” she says, voice reverberating off the walls like a gong, “what took you so long? You finished so fast, but it took you so long to come down.”
She must’ve heard Quanxi opening the door.
“I,” Quanxi whispers, and then doesn’t have anything else left in her. You. What have you done? What have I seen?
Have I really seen it?
“Come here.” When Quanxi doesn’t move, gaze straying to the now-unconscious boy on the ground, Makima repeats, “Come here.”
And Quanxi feels it like it’s tangible, now, the string that Makima’s attached to her sternum, tugging her inexorably forward. She’s always felt it, but now it’s strong enough to yank her ribcage out in a firework of gore. She walks over woodenly and kneels in front of Makima.
Makima smiles, and Quanxi trembles. “Good. Now answer me—you saw it, didn’t you?”
This is an easy question to lie to. Two words: saw what? and a straight face, blending in just the slightest hint of confusion. There’s no one better at controlling her own body than Quanxi, and this should be easy, but she isn’t herself right now. She can’t—
“Saw what?” manages Quanxi. This isn’t a vision. There are no do-overs.
“Oh, Quanxi,” says Makima, sounding almost endeared. She lifts a finger and Quanxi flinches, but she only taps Quanxi’s forehead. “You can be honest with me. You should be, but I’ll forgive you just this once.” She straightens up and moves aside, allowing Quanxi a full view of the boy’s unmoving body. She nudges his mutilated hand with a shiny leather toe. “Aren’t you curious about this? Look closer.”
Quanxi doesn’t want to, but she does, and ice pools in her stomach. From the first time she used Foresight, she could’ve sworn his index finger was completely gone. But now she can see the bone jutting out halfway to where the first knuckle would be, the flesh and veins a beat behind and knitting together after it. Before her very eye the finger grows back.
“Wondrous, isn’t it? He’s unlimited. And watch—” Makima reaches over and pulls out Quanxi’s sword in one fluid motion, the silver sound echoing. She places her hand on the ground in front of Quanxi’s knee, lines the blade of the sword up against the cuticle of her index finger, and presses down. Quanxi’s own flesh cries out. She breaks out of her daze and tears the sword from Makima’s grasp, but Makima’s fingertip is already separated, rolling a few inches away. It’s almost comical.
Makima grips Quanxi’s chin with her uninjured hand and forces her to watch as her finger begins to repair itself. The flesh climbs.
“You see, I’ve become unlimited too. And this way, I’ll be able to give some of myself to you.”
“No,” says Quanxi. “No, no. Not like this.” She wanted a temporary bliss, a taste of what she’d never known, an ice pop in a blazing desert.
I brought you a stolen watch like a cat dragging in a dead rat for its owner. In return, you’re giving me a piece of you, melted into light.
Makima angles her head. “Not like this,” she parrots. “Right. Before I let you have me, I need your time. I need you.”
Is my time me? Quanxi thinks blankly. And nothing comes free. And no advantage comes without conditions.
Makima tucks a stray piece of Quanxi’s hair behind her ear, fingers soft and insistent. “It has to be you. See, it has to be a gift. When you were up there, did you run into our Sato-san?” The collector. The owner of this house, vomiting on all fours in the middle of the night. “He tried taking Denji’s finger by force and consuming it, but of course it didn't work. It has to be willingly given.”
At the mention of his name, Denji lets out a weak whimper. Makima ignores him. Her finger is still regenerating, but at a slower pace. She clicks her tongue, completely unconcerned by the pain, and continues, “And the annoying thing is that it isn’t permanent. There’s a time limit. I’ve taken in an entire finger, and it’s already begun to wear off. He’s infinite, but I can only be unlimited for a short while.” Her mouth twists. “I want to change that.”
Quanxi’s silent for a moment, then tells her, “You want so much.” In comparison, she’s frugal.
“I do. I want the whole world.”
Makima is a true thief, better than the rest of them. She’s never satisfied. Quanxi’s satisfied with sharpening her blades, having marathon sex with her girls ‘til morning, occasionally hitting the thrill of a high-risk heist; she’s lacking.
“And you, Quanxi.” In the flat yellow of the basement lights, a boy’s pained breathing puncturing the air, Makima is so, so beautiful. She’s everything Quanxi’s ever wanted. She’s everything Quanxi’s never needed. She presses her lips against the corner of Quanxi’s mouth, lets the tip of her tongue slip out. “I want you. I need you.”
“Stop,” says Quanxi, almost gasping, but Makima wields her voice like Quanxi melds herself with swords, and she knows it’s useless. Makima equating her with the world is a comparison only a fool would believe, and she’s falling.
“Think about it, my control and your time. We’d be unstoppable.” She’s blatant about it now, the silky bubble words that pop out of her mouth and float up to the sky, yanking out countless rib cages in their wake. Blood bursting like a flower in bloom, the pistil the heart. Control. Control. If Makima consumed Quanxi’s time in its purest form, she could extend the time limit to anywhere she wanted, anytime. As for Quanxi—
There would be no Foresight, sixty anymore. It would simply be Foresight. Controlling her mind’s eye, seconds streaming out indefinitely.
Makima is so, so beautiful and Quanxi is so, so cold. She tries to pull away from Makima, shaking her head, but she’s so small now. The heavens placed upon her this limit as much to protect her as to protect the world. Greed is in her nature, but she’s never wanted to become a creature of the future. Only the present.
“It’s perfect,” Makima says, final like she’s landing the killing blow. She kisses Quanxi, kisses her again. Quanxi shouldn’t be able to feel a thing by now, but every time Makima leans in, every bit of her sings. “Real love. I into you and you into me. Perfect.”
Quanxi wishes she’d never went down the stairs, that she’d turned around and climbed back up halfway through, but she didn’t need to use Foresight so many times, or at all, to understand that this was the convergence of all her paths. As certain as the existence of time itself foreseeing the discovery of the fourth dimension.
“Quanxi, baby. Won’t you give your time to me? It won’t hurt, I promise. And when you take me, it’ll be the best thing you’ve ever felt. Then we’ll always carry a part of each other inside us, Quanxi. Quanxi.”
Makima hangs a smile on her lips like a painting, turns her head a fraction. And Quanxi kisses back.
❥
The world whites out. All the seconds Quanxi’s ever stolen come back and crushes her into Makima, and she’s no thief, no thief anymore. Makima is burning red-gold into her and she can’t feel her own heartbeat, only the watch’s. Makima lied. It hurts so bad Quanxi thinks all the bodies that’ve died by her blade are rising their rotted corpses from the earth, digging their stone-sharp nails into her skull. And Makima’s whispering into her mind, Good, my perfect Quanxi, just like that, just—like—that—
And Quanxi is kissing back.
❥
Kishibe’s here, right on time at 2 o’clock in the morning. All the lights in the yard have turned off. The painting, three diamond pieces, and the body of a boy are safely loaded into the trunk, and Quanxi stands beside Makima on the curb. There’s a lull, then the wind picks up.
“Nice watch,” comments Kishibe, gaze flicking towards Makima’s wrist.
“Thank you,” Makima says. “It’s very quiet. You have to have sharp ears to hear it. Can you hear it, Kishibe?”
He shakes his head, then turns around to open the car door for them. Quanxi doesn’t move. Makima stays beside her, waiting.
She can hear it. It’s all she can hear. It’s 2:19, but she’s not there anymore, she’s sixty seconds in, sixty seconds more, three-sixty. Tick,
tock. Tick,
tock, Tick,
tock,
tick, tock,
tick,
tock, tick, tick,
tick,
tick,
tick,
tick, tick, tick,
ticktickticktickticktick
and it’s four now, Makima’s tongue a brand against her neck, and this groan is being ripped from the pit of her stomach, Tick,
tock. Tick,
tock,
tick,
tick,
tick,
tick, tick, tick,
tickticktickticktick
and it’s dawn now, the sky pale and the air crisp, and the sheets are warm and her legs no longer lonely, and there are two monsters in bed. She puts a hand on her own throat. Makima waits. Tick,
tock,
tick,
tock,
tick,
tock,
tick,
Tock.
“What’re you looking at?” asks Kishibe, and she’s back, still standing on the curb. Wind is laughing. Wind is crying. “Staring into space like that.”
“Too many things,” Makima answers for her.
Just you, Quanxi thinks, lowering a hand to cover the back of Makima’s head as Makima ducks into the car. All futures unfold from Quanxi’s chest and lead into Makima’s mouth. Always you.