Tit for tat. That’s all this ever ended up being.

When Lily and Victor Feng came to visit the Blue Velvet, I knew they were looking for trouble.

I knew the circles they ran in. I was at least passingly familiar with the rhetoric being pushed.

What I didn’t know was that the two of them were on the rocks. They shared too much to ever be fully separate so they would continue to share a home but maintain separate bedrooms.

In public, however, the pair presented with a unified front.

But then, one night as they were preparing to cook dinner, something they never did, a fire began.

They didn’t make it.


MANDARC//

It just reminds you, this really can happen to anyone.

ROXANNE//

Save early and often.

MANDARC//

What other projects are you working on, Master?

STRAUD//

Calamity's Council is in the early stages of courting Judith Ward.

SEBASTIAN//

Doesn't she have suspicions about Count Orlok?

STRAUD//

It's an unfortunate truth.

MANDARC//

But she has no proof.

CEDRIC//

It's only a matter of time...

MANDARC//

Maybe she feels she couldn't side with us without being a traitor to her own kind.

CEDRIC//

That's charitable. I wonder if someone like her could see the world wide enough to have such an outlook.

MANDARC//

You think she has no loyalty to the human race?

CEDRIC//

I think she, like so many others, does whatever feels right with little concern for how current events will be interpreted in the future. Few people are self-possessed enough to act in the interests of anyone besides themselves, let alone the entire human race.

MANDARC//

Humans are capable of surprising feats when their backs are to the wall.

STRAUD//

The fact that she'll end up allied with Trente Gagarin is the real tragedy. I don't begrudge her if she must call me enemy but that she'll end up deceived by Trente calls out to me as a justice that needs righting.

She'll stop at nothing to see her future bloom. A foul pestilence with which I am all too familiar. Judith Ward cannot possibly understand the stakes of the game she plays. In this case it may serve to play her hand for her to ensure the moves she makes are in everyone's best interest.

ROXANNE//

Isn't that paternalistic?

STRAUD//

Of course it is but we may end up having no choice. This game is life or death and simply not playing is not an option.

ROXANNE//

She hasn't agreed that we may act on her behalf.

STRAUD//

I tried, many years ago, to talk to her. As you'll recall, we were friends once. She knows enough to be dangerous. We aren't at leisure to act in best possible faith.

ROXANNE//

Well, we should still at least try.