Dangerous by Default

27. The doves meet

Why are you screaming? wondered the woman in the crimson hoodie from her perch, nestled in a darkened corner of the hotel bar. Her eyes blankly studied the grotesque face of her tiki glass. It's large rectangular teeth hung open in an expression that was either terrifying, or terrified. She couldn't decide which.

"Is it because your brains taste like pineapples? Or is it because you are a truscum who hates non-binary people? Let's investigate", she said out loud, smirking as she sank her teeth into the fresh pineapple slice that hung off its rim, tearing its juicy pulp from the skin. The nectar was sweet and delicious.

The truth was, she was starving. She had lingered in the museum for hours while the police took statements and catalogued evidence. Being hungry was a small price to pay for... ascendance. she smiled. That night she had watched from the sidelines as her little black swan gave a masterful performance of Grieving Mom with a Handgun. Millions of dollars in property damage. A roomful of traumatized art snobs. She thought of the trapeze artist who had fallen two stories through the atrium of the museum. Hi doctor, can I get a little plastic surgery done on my face while you reconstruct my spine?

Then there was the curator. The poor girl took one in the ribs like a champ. Good luck getting her to talk now. The woman smiled. The night couldn't have gone better had she rehearsed it. Her mentor would be pleased.

That wasn't even the best part, she thought as she stroked the concealed object in the bulge of her pouch. I have a bulge in my pocket and it's not even my genitals! How 2020 of me. Feeling a light buzz sink in, she looked forward to properly celebrating the magnificent chaos of the evening. But first, she had one final appointment to tend to. She drained the rest of her Mai Tai as she slipped off of her stool to leave. It was time.

The bar connected to the lobby of the Fairmont hotel by a harshly lit basement hallway. She pulled the cowl of her hoodie further down to maintain the shadows around her face. She knew there were cameras everywhere and it was likely that someone was tracking the feed, trying their best to identify her. She stepped out onto the polished marble floors of the lobby and scanned the room. A large sign, propped beside a row of ballroom doors, caught her attention.

Rare Manuscript Sellers Society Conference

Two white doves danced in the insignia that boldly decorated it's upper border. Slightly incongruous with the bookish appearance of the conference, a muscular security guard stood guard outside, the outline of a concealed weapon just visible under his suit coat. The woman in the crimson hoodie approached him confidently.

"Good evening," she said.

"Entrance time?" he asked, his eyes briefly sizing her up, afraid to let his gaze linger too long.

"10:50" she responded. He whispered the time into the walkie talkie mic clipped to his lapel.

"Name?"

She smirked at him. "You can call me White Wing."

"Right. Someone went in just ahead of you. It'll be a minute," he said coldly.

In an organization that resorted to blackmail as casually as breathing, the biggest shared concern among the members of the Doves was having their identity revealed to one another. They were, like most centuries-old secret societies, riddled with trifling rivalries. The timed entry was intended to provide them the cover of anonymity when entering a clandestine meeting. Considering the obvious limitations of this system, it was customary to arrive in disguise.

The woman in the crimson hoodie didn't particularly fear her colleagues. Her lethality was by now well acknowledged, a reputation that had mostly saved her from the petty bribery and assassination attempts that seemed to occupy the rank-and-file Doves. But she wasn't about to let her guard down. Treachery can come in many forms, and what the others lacked in physical strength, cunning, and anarchic glee, they made up for with deviousness and patience. The guard touched his gloved hand to his earpiece and nodded to her as he pulled the door open.

"You have three minutes." White Wing flashed him a flirtatious wink, only to wallop his stomach with a surprise uppercut that brought him to his knees.

"Leave the bossiness to the ladies " she whispered in his ear before she stepped inside.

As the doors clicked shut, White Wing found herself walled off from the rest of the ballroom by a tall velvet curtain forming a makeshift antechamber. On the other side, voices boomed over a loudspeaker in a jaw-breaking ancient dialect. A garrulous call-and-response erupted from the rest of the attendees. She grabbed a cloak from a wooden rack and pulled it over her clothing. A disguise over a disguise. Cute.

Beside the shelf was the Spiralis. She rolled her eyes again. More ancient-ass security. She centered her weight around the large brass cylinder, and prepared to wrestle with the centuries-old mechanism that was designed to keep secret things secret. Note to self: bring a blowtorch next time.

The Spiralis was originally designed by the Knights Templar as the world's first mobile ATM machine. Each unique combination could unlock a different chamber, allowing account holders to store miniaturized ledgers that functioned as a bank account. The Doves kept their own treasures within its chambers. All she had to do was open the damn thing.

She pushed against the floor with her legs and gripped the slippery metal plates. One by one the cuneiform markings inscribed on their surfaces became rotated into precisely the correct order. An audible tick signaling the alignment of hidden mechanisms within. She was panting now, sweating under the heavy velvet robe. She pulled up the cowl to suck in fresh air. Finally she twisted the cone-shaped cap causing a pin to release and a small silver trinket fell into the tray at the base of the device. It was a tiny filigree pin, a small dove's wing decorated in a flourish of gleaming diamonds. The White Wing Pendant. She fastened the pin carefully to the front of her cloak.

To be the bearer of a pendant was to carry its unique responsibilities, to be charged with the mantle of its specific lineage. Among the Doves, the White Wing had a particular function, akin to the role of fire in an old forest. To burn things down so that something new could rise up. There were many who resisted her, those who thought that the next chapter of the Doves organization should be firmly centered in replicating its past. But Turtur had other ideas.

There was a reason that she was chosen to carry the White Wing, a reason she was about to prove unequivocally. With the success of tonight, the final trap was now laid perfectly. In twenty-four hours, the whole world would be ablaze with Mina Blue's humiliation. Clock strikes 10:49:58... clock strikes 10:49:59... White Wing felt the thick bulge in her pocket once more and smiled as she pulled the heavy curtain aside. Two hundred cloaked bodies shifted towards her as she entered the ballroom.