Reversed

xxv. twenty-five

Sophie gasped, and everyone's head turned towards her. "Yes?" Vespera asked.

Lady Gisela looked as if she'd just been talking to Kenric. Sophie must've missed what they'd said while she was sifting through her memories.

Sophie's eyes cut to Kenric, then to Gisela. She felt a cold ache seep into her right palm and realized that she was clutching one of the metal bars so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

She let go and took a deep breath. "The Initiative."

Lady Gisela regarded her with a calculating stare. "What about it?"

"I know what you're planning to do," Sophie said, the words pouring out of her. "I understand now. I pieced together all the clues you gave me and all the times the Initiative has been mentioned. I know about the Council—about the 'relocating'—about the timeline, about the hard choices—"

Vespera and Lady Gisela shared a glance.

"—and about the humans," Sophie rambled on. "All of it."

Ruy cocked his head.

"And how did you just suddenly manage to figure it out?" Gethen asked, his arms crossed as he leaned against the desk.

"The barred room and what Kenric said about 'moving the replacing part of the timeline up' triggered it."

"What do you think the Initiative is?" Vespera asked, her face practically imperceptible under her veil in the scarce lighting. "I'm pretty curious myself, since I only know part of it. You've been given more clues than I have." She cast a sidelong glance at Lady Gisella. 

Sophie's breath caught again. She didn't know how to say what she had figured out. She opened her mouth to start, but just ended up closing it again.

"She probably doesn't know," Kenric said smugly.

Sophie shot a glare at him, a flare of indignation rising in her chest. "It's about our ineffective leadership," she hissed, "and fixing it. And finally doing something about the humans."

Kenric didn't have anything to say back to that.

"Well, am I right?" Sophie's gaze cut back to Lady Gisela.

Her eyes were locked onto Sophie, and Sophie made herself tilt her chin up to show that she wasn't intimidated.

Lady Gisela finally nodded. "Did you figure out what we're planning to do with the Council and the humans?"

"After the timeline is followed through with, the Council won't exist. And the humans... " Sophie's gaze traveled over to the barred off room.

"Let's just say that the majority of them will be taken care of," Lady Gisela said with a slight smirk. 

Her words bounced around Sophie's mind, slowly shifting and morphing until only the word CRITERION was splattered in red at the forefront of her brain. 

"I must say," Vespera said, "I'm quite impressed. It ties in with Nightfall, your son's legacy, Stellarlune... " Sophie could hear her smile dripping from her voice. "It's much bigger than anything the Black Swan could ever dream up, and it's exactly what the Lost Cities needs."

"I'm assuming that means that you're in for helping us... longer than we had agreed on?" Lady Gisela asked her.

Vespera gave a curt nod. "But that doesn't mean that I still don't have my own agenda," she warned, her slender, bone-like fingers stretching out and then contracting.

"I'm in," Sophie said, clenching her fists. "I think it's finally time to right all the problems in the Lost Cities. All the problems that reached their peak when the Black Swan created me."