Cyndi Cylendar's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Cyndi Cylendar was born in 1289, and by now she had learned to smile while she lied. She sat at the desk in her cover building, a small stone room lined with shelves of books Heather believed she read. Behind the books, her real work waited: charts of the realms, names of allies Bella had never met, and a plan that ended with Cyndi holding every door between every world. She wanted it all. She had wanted it since the day Bella walked into a room and Cyndi felt herself vanish. She checked the feed from the camera above Bella's study first. The lens hummed under its casing. Bella sat by the window in her blue robes, writing slowly, the scanner resting on the table beside her tea. Cyndi watched Bella set down the pen. Bella stood, walked out of frame, and left the scanner behind. Cyndi moved. She crossed the garden, slipped through the side door, and lifted the scanner off the table in one motion. Its screen glowed pink under her thumb. She tucked it into her sleeve and walked back the way she came, past the wooden fence that hid the crates behind her cover building. Her hands did not shake until she reached her desk. She worked through the night. She copied Bella's routines, her phrases, the way Bella held her chin when she spoke to the realms. In the morning she brought the scanner back and set it on the table as if it had never moved. Then she asked Bella, plainly, to scan her. She said she wanted to know her own worth. She said it with Heather standing in the doorway, holding a cup, because Heather made everything look ordinary. Bella lifted the scanner. She pointed it at Cyndi. The screen flickered, held, and went dark. Bella read the result and set the device down. "No," she said. "The role is not yours." She did not explain. She did not soften it. Heather looked between them and said nothing, because it was not her story. Cyndi kept her face still while something inside her folded shut. She walked back to her cover building and stood at the desk with the charts spread open. The scan had failed. The role would not be given. That left only what could be taken, and taken quietly. She pulled a sheet of paper toward her and began a new list: every camera she would need to add, every book she would move behind the fence, every hour of Heather's Thursday call she could use. Bella would keep her role for now. Cyndi would learn to hide her work until the day she did not need to hide it anymore.