A guttural roar, heavy with the scent of cheap tobacco and stale fear, ripped Savia Rovis from a dream of perfectly sorted microchips. The sound wasn't a dream, though. It was the solid oak of her apartment door splintering inward. “Rovis! Get out here, you piece of gutter trash!” Savia didn’t flinch. Her eyelids, heavy with the sleep she never quite caught up on, merely fluttered. The mattress groaned under her as she pushed herself up, the familiar ache in her spine a dull counterpoint to the impending chaos. Through the gap in her bedroom door, she saw the entry hall bathed in the harsh, flickering glare of tactical flashlights. Dust motes danced in the beams. Seven hulking figures in dark suits, each wielding a combat rifle with casual menace, fanned out amongst her collection of antique radios. At their head stood Tullio, a man built like a cargo container, his face a roadmap of old scars. His eyes, usually clouded with a kind of brute confusion, narrowed into slits of furious purpose. “Where is it, witch? The funds from the Contessa shipping line. Millions, gone. We know you did it.” Savia padded into the living room, her bare feet silent on the worn rug. She wore a faded grey t-shirt and boxer shorts – her standard sleepwear. Her dark hair, usually meticulously pulled back for work, lay in a tangled mess around her shoulders. She rubbed one eye slowly. “Contessa? That old fraud. I thought she’d finally gone bankrupt.” Tullio’s jaw slackened. “You… you thought? You cleaned her out! Don’t play dumb. Renzo wants answers. He wants his money.” He gestured with his rifle, the muzzle a dark, hungry maw pointed directly at her chest. “And if he doesn’t get it, he’ll have your liver for supper.” Savia yawned, a quiet, expansive thing that stretched her jaw. “Is that an actual threat, or just hyperbole? Because frankly, my liver is probably overworked already. Too much coffee, not enough sleep.” She glanced at the overturned antique gramophone, its delicate horn bent. “And really, the gramophone? That was a 1920s Bellarmine. Do you know how hard those are to find in working order?” Tullio stared. His enforcers, rigid moments before, exchanged uncertain glances. The woman was insane. She was being accused of embezzling millions from the Morata syndicate, her life was on the line, and she was complaining about a broken antique? “Look,” Savia continued, her voice flat, “this is all very exciting, but it’s barely 6 AM. Did you want some coffee? It’s probably stale, I brewed it last night.” She gestured vaguely towards the kitchen, where a single, cold cup sat next to a perpetually half-empty pot. Tullio’s face twisted in a silent battle between rage and profound bewilderment. This wasn’t how people facing execution behaved. Not unless they were so cold, so utterly certain of their own power, that they considered their attackers mere nuisances. A chilling thought solidified in his mind: this woman wasn’t afraid because she had a plan. She was a calculating, ice-blooded mastermind. Before Tullio could find his voice, a new presence filled the shattered doorway. The air in the small apartment grew heavier, charged with a potent, dangerous stillness. Renzo Morata. He moved with the predatory grace of a large cat, every muscle coiled, his expensive suit a dark whisper of power. His eyes, the color of storm-churned obsidian, swept over the chaos, lingering on Tullio’s baffled face, then fixing on Savia. He stood taller than she remembered, his frame broader, carrying a focused menace that pricked the skin along her arms. She had caught glimpses of him only at the few galas her estranged parent dragged her to, always a dark silhouette against the ballroom perimeter. Up close, he was a force of nature, contained only by his own formidable will. Renzo didn't speak. He simply walked into the room, his gaze never leaving Savia. Tullio and the other enforcers parted like water, their rifles suddenly seeming insignificant. He stopped a mere arm's length from her, the sheer force of his presence enough to steal the breath from her lungs – if she had bothered to hold it in the first place. “Savia Rovis,” Renzo's voice was a low growl, rough like ground stone, yet oddly resonant. “You have a talent for making powerful enemies. My syndicate’s funds, vanished.” His hand, large and calloused, reached out, his fingers brushing the side of her neck with an abrasive, startling friction. His thumb rested just beneath her ear, a feather-light pressure that promised imminent, brutal violence. “Prepare yourself.” Savia tilted her head slightly, her gaze unwavering. “For what, exactly? A lecture? I’ve had plenty of those from my elders. If you’re here to execute me, I’d prefer a quick, clean job. I’m truly exhausted.” She paused, her vacant stare steadying on his collar. “Though, my matriarch… she owes your syndicate a substantial sum, doesn't she? For that failed investment in the Perla shipping docks? She’d be ruined if I died before settling those ledgers. All those years of her telling me to be responsible.” Renzo’s thumb pressed harder, the dark focus of his gaze parting by the slightest fraction. He expected fear, pleas, tears. He got… a deadpan negotiation about filial responsibility and a mother’s nagging. “You propose to settle her debt?” he murmured, his voice a dangerous question. “With what? The non-existent funds you stole?” “Not with the funds,” Savia corrected, her tone still flat. “With myself. A marriage of convenience. Your bloodline gains an alliance with the Rovis name, however diluted. Her debt is cleared. And I get to finally sleep in a place where I won’t be constantly worried about assassins kicking down my door. I hear the Morata Citadel is rather secure.” She met his intense gaze, her own eyes betraying nothing but a profound, almost comical, weariness. “Think of it as a merger. My assets for your protection. And no more broken gramophones.” The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. Tullio looked as if his brain was trying to untangle a Gordian knot with a butter knife. Renzo, however, simply stared at Savia. The fire in his eyes slowly, almost imperceptibly, began to change. The rage didn't vanish, but it melted, reshaping into something else, something far more complicated and utterly mesmerized. “A marriage of convenience,” Renzo repeated, testing the words. A corner of his mouth twitched, a faint, predatory curve. “You’re proposing to marry me, Savia Rovis, to clear your mother's debt and secure a good night’s sleep?” “Precisely,” Savia said, as if discussing the weather. “It’s efficient. Less paperwork than an execution, I imagine.” Renzo’s hand fell from her neck. He took a step back, his eyes raking over her disheveled form, then the chaos of her apartment. A slow smile, chilling and utterly captivating, spread across his face. “Done. Pack a bag. You’re coming to the Citadel now.” He turned to Tullio. “Send a crew. Clean this up. And alert the household. We have a wedding to arrange.” Savia nodded, as if Renzo had simply agreed to her choice of breakfast. “Right. Just need my laptop.” She walked past the still-stunned Tullio, past the silent enforcers, and into her small study. Her ancient, battered laptop sat on a desk piled high with circuit boards and half-repaired electronics. As her fingers brushed the USB port to disconnect a charger, a tiny, almost invisible flash drive, embedded in the side of the laptop’s casing, activated. The screen, which had been displaying a schematic for a vintage radio, flickered. The schematic vanished, replaced by a stark, black interface. A single line of crimson text pulsed in the center: ‘PROTOCOL: OLYMPUS ACTIVATED.’ Below it, a countdown timer began, numbers ticking down with an ominous, relentless precision: 72:00:00. Savia stared, her exhaustion momentarily forgotten. Her memory, a fractured landscape of missing years, offered no explanation. She had no idea what Olympus was, or why a timer was counting down on a device she’d owned for years. And she certainly didn’t know why, for the first time in a very long time, a cold, sharp dread pierced through her usual apathy.

Rude Awakenings and Ransom Notes