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The elevator smelled of sterile disinfectant and the heatwave’s dust. Five floors up and rising, the mirrored walls reflected back the sinners in all their ill-fitting glory. Heathcliff's shoulders were hunched, a thundercloud brewing under his collar. Rodion kept peering at her own reflection, adjusting a stray strand of hair. Meursault stared straight ahead.
And Outis.
Dante's clockwork gaze flickered toward her. She stood rigid, hands clasped behind her back, chin held at a precise military angle. She was wound far too tight, a spring compressed past its safe limit.
"Remind me why we're doin' this again," Heathcliff grumbled. "Some middle-management pencil-pusher wants to chat about the shiny twig? Should've just sent them a bill."
"Standard procedure, Heathcliff," Outis said.
Rodion shot a glance at Gregor. What was worrying her was that Outis… she was acting as usual. The sinners all knew it was her turn now, and were behaving with appropriate caution around her. But of course, they were nothing if not intensely curious. What could possibly be lurking in the past of their most stern, uptight member?
Outis's knuckles were white.
They were white in the reflection, they were white when Dante risked a direct glance. The pressure in her jaw was palpable even from across the small box. Dante was quite worried. She seemed about to crack.
The elevator chimed, a polite, cheerful little sound that made the air curdle. The doors slid open onto a corridor so beige it seemed to absorb all hope. A young woman in an ill-fitting blazer stood waiting, holding a tablet.
"Manager Dante and the LCB sinners?" she chirped, her eyes roving over them like a barcode scanner. "If you'll follow me, please. Penelope is expecting you."
They were herded down the corridor, their footsteps muffled by the beige carpet. The building hummed with the quiet, soul-crushing efficiency of corporate life. Desks in an open-plan office stretched out like a sterile ocean, the glow of monitors the only sign of life.
“Are you sure this is a fixer office?” said Sinclair to Rodion. “It looks… kind of like a wing?”
Rodion shushed him, gesturing to keep his voice down. “It’s a pretty massive office, from what I know. Big enough that there’s a lot of politic-ing going on here too. Apparently it’s been a bit uneasy ever since their old CEO dipped after the Smoke War.”
The assistant led them to a pair of imposing mahogany doors, polished to a mirror shine. She pushed them open and stood aside.
Penelope's office was the antithesis of the beige corridor. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the city, choked with smog and glowing with light. A single, pristine white desk sat before the view. On it, next to a slim laptop, was a vase with a bundle of bright lilies.
The woman behind the desk did not rise. She simply looked up, her cool grey eyes taking them in, one by one. The faintest streaks of grey threaded through her dark hair, worn loose to her shoulders. She was older than the photograph.
Of course she was. Eleven years did that. It carved new lines around her mouth, deepened the ones at the corners of her eyes. But the set of her brow, the sharpness in her gaze, the angle of her jaw-
No, not much had changed at all.
Penelope.
Outis's breath hitched, a tiny, almost imperceptible sound. The world narrowed to the space between them. Eleven years collapsed into a single, agonising second.
Penelope's gaze slid past the others and landed on Outis. A flicker of something, surprise? recognition? confusion? crossed her face before being smoothed away by an unreadable calm. She looked at her for a long moment, her head tilted slightly.
Then she smiled, a cool, controlled expression that never reached her eyes. "You must be the sinners of Limbus Company," she said, her voice a low and steady. "Welcome to Ithaca. I am Penelope, the current CEO." She gestured to the chairs arranged before her desk. "Please, have a seat."
Outis moved like a marionette with its strings cut, her body stiff and uncooperative. She sat on the very edge of the chair, her back ramrod straight. She did not look at Penelope again.
"I'll be brief," Penelope said, looking at Dante. "You're here about the branch facility in the District 6 backstreets. Specifically, the object inside it."
"The Golden Bough," Faust confirmed.
"Yes." She reached to one side and produced a slim folder, setting it on the desk without opening it. "Ithaca has maintained operational presence in the surrounding area for eleven years. Recently the number of interested parties has sharply risen. Several have attempted to access the branch." A pause, the length of exactly one beat. "None succeeded."
"You stopped them," Ishmael said.
Penelope's smile was thin. "Ithaca's focus is on corporate security. We protect our assets. The Bough is a valuable asset, and as such has attracted a lot of… unwanted attention. I trust I don't need to elaborate on the chaos it would cause if it were… mishandled."
Gregor cleared his throat. "And you want us to what? Just take it?"
"No," Penelope said. "I want you to retrieve it for us. You see, despite controlling the area, we have had difficulty accessing it. According to our contacts at your company, you have a… unique rapport with the things, don't you? This is not a request for help. It's an offer. Retrieve the Bough, bring it here, and give us forty-eight hours. After this period of time, you are free to take it away. I am prepared to offer a contract for this retrieval mission."
"That's it?" Heathcliff said.
"Not quite." She produced a single sheet from the folder beside her and slid it to the centre of the table. "A non-interference clause. Retrieving the Bough constitutes the entirety of Limbus Company's interest in this area. There will be no follow-up presence, and no contact with other parties operating here. You take the Bough and you leave."
Gregor looked at the sheet, and looked back up. "You want us to promise to go away."
"I want it in writing, yes."
"Why us?" Ishmael said. "There are larger parties with more resources who've wanted that Bough. Why negotiate with Limbus Company specifically?"
"Because of your track record." Penelope's hands rested loose on the table. "N Corp. K Corp. U Corp. You go in, you retrieve what you came for, and you’re onto the next. You are also, if you'll forgive my bluntness, too small and too new of a presence to want anything that large. That's not an insult, by the way. It's why we're talking."
Faust’s brow wrinkled almost imperceptibly. “We appreciate your honesty with us in this matter.”
"Wow, girl. You've really researched us," Rodion laughed.
"Of course. So, will we have an agreement?"
Dante looked at the sheet, and then at Outis, whose eyes had been fixed on the surface of the desk for this entire conversation. Not a word. Definitely uncharacteristic of her.
<Can we have a moment to discuss?> Dante ticked.
“Our manager would like a moment to discuss your terms,” Faust relayed.
A sharp knock sounded throughout the room. Penelope’s expression froze, a tiny flicker of annoyance in her eyes.
The door opened without permission. A man strode in, dressed in the crisp, green-trimmed uniform of G Corp. His shoulders were broad, his chin held high with the casual arrogance of the truly entitled. He ignored the sinners entirely, walking directly up to Penelope's desk as if he owned the room, which he clearly wished he did.
He slammed a hand flat on the polished wood, the sound echoing unpleasantly in the silent office. He was smiling. It was not a kind smile.
"Penelope," he said. "My dearest. I was hoping I'd catch you.”
Penelope leaned back in her chair, her expression unruffled.
"Antinous," she said smoothly. "An unexpected pleasure. My calendar did not show an appointment for you. And you know how I detest it when my schedule is disrupted."
Antinous laughed, short and sharp. "Come now. Since when have you needed an appointment?" He hadn't moved his hand from the desk. "We're old friends, you and I."
"We're colleagues," Penelope corrected.
She turned back to Dante, unhurried.
"I believe you wanted a moment to discuss terms internally," she said. "Please, take your time."
Antinous pulled a chair from the side of the room. He sat in it.
"Actually," he said, "G Corp has some interest in this discussion. Given our-" a pause, generous, theatrical- "longstanding relationship with Ithaca, it seems only natural we'd want to be kept informed of any new arrangements."
"Your interest is noted," Penelope said. "It has no bearing on the current discussion."
"I'd argue otherwise."
"You're welcome to."
Sinclair leaned very slightly toward Ishmael. "Who is that?" she murmured.
"No idea," Ishmael said. "But she doesn't like him."
Outis had not moved a muscle. She didn't even seem to be breathing. What on earth had happened in her absence?
Penelope gestured with one hand. “Antinous is here from G Corp as our esteemed guest. He is not part of this conversation. As we were saying," she turned to the sinners again, "the non-interference clause ensures the long-term stability of the region." She smiled at Antinous, a smile that could have cut glass. "The current stability."
"This isn't about stability," Antinous scoffed, leaning forward. "It's about the Bough. And it's about you, Penelope. Sitting here, all alone, with this precious office and this valuable asset, right on our border. We can't have that, can we? It's untidy." He gestured vaguely at the sinners. "Bringing in outside help? This is desperation. We're here with an offer. We’ve been here with an offer for years. And it's far better than whatever these people are offering you."
He let that hang in the air, waiting for a reaction. Penelope simply watched him.
"We have a long and storied history with you, Penelope," Antinous continued, his smile sharpening. "And with your dearly departed husband.”
Penelope's expression didn't change.
"Wife," she said.
Antinous blinked.
"Pardon?"
"My wife," Penelope said. Her voice was exactly the same. "Not husband. You'd think after all this time you'd have the basic details correct."
"Of course," he said. "My apologies. Your dearly departed wife. Odysseus." He let the name sit, watching for something. "Ithaca was built on her reputation, after all. On her… connections. Her particular talent for being on the right side of things at the right moment." The smile returned, slower. "We've always wondered how she managed that. Our G Corp may be new, but we are privy to a long history, Penelope."
Penelope picked up her pen.
"G Corp's memories," she said, "are their own business. As is their interpretation of history." She turned a page on the letter of engagement, unhurried. "I built Ithaca. Whatever my wife's reputation contributed, the office standing before you today is eleven years of my work. I'd ask you to remember that."
"Of course," Antinous said. "Remarkable, really. A woman alone, an independent office, holding all of this together without so much as a-" another pause, generous, deliberate "-a Wing's support. It makes one wonder."
He let that hang too.
From the far end of the desk Outis was not breathing. She was quite sure she had stopped some time ago. The city beyond the window was still there, smog-choked and indifferent, and she was looking at it very hard.
Dearly departed. The words were a physical blow. They struck her in the gut, stealing the air from her lungs. It was her decision, after all. Her decision to run away from her mess. The inevitable consequences had simply caught up to her. Her hands, clenched in her lap, were trembling. She pressed them together, digging her nails into her own skin, the tiny pain a desperate anchor against the rising tide of… what? Regret? A grief so vast it threatened to swallow her whole. Eleven years of running, and it had all led to this beige room, with this man’s insinuating tone and the lilies on her wife’s desk.
"I understand," Antinous continued, turning it pleasantly, "that Lady Dias has been very attentive to Ithaca's situation over the years. Unusual, for a mere office. One does wonder what was offered in return."
The silence lasted one second. Two. Outis counted them carefully.
"Lady Dias's attentiveness," Penelope said, "is a matter between Dias and Ithaca." Her voice was the same. It was exactly the same. Only her hands, flat and motionless on the desk, betrayed anything, and only to someone who knew what to look for. "I don't discuss Ithaca's arrangements with parties who arrive uninvited to meetings they have no stake in."
"No stake," Antinous repeated, as if tasting the words.
"Penelope. We share a border. We share a history. We share," he glanced, briefly, around the room, a surveying look that landed on no one in particular and everyone "a great many things, whether you'd like to acknowledge them or not." He stood, smoothing his jacket. "I only mention Lady Dias because it seems relevant context. For your new friends." His eyes moved across the sinners. "It's good to know who you're really working with, after all. Where the… support, actually comes from."
He stood up.
"I'll leave you to your arrangements," Antinous said pleasantly. "Penelope. Always a pleasure." He picked up his portfolio. "We'll be in touch about that meeting."
"In due course," Penelope said.
He left. The door clicked shut.
Penelope's hands on the desk were no longer still. One finger traced a slow, deliberate circle on the polished wood. A long second passed. Then another.
"My apologies," Penelope said. Her smile was gone, but her composure was back. "G Corp has been, for some years, attempting to… acquire certain interests here."
"I can imagine," Ishmael said, dry.
"You have no idea." Penelope pushed the paper again. "The terms. Are they acceptable?"
Faust looked from the paper to Dante, and then, pointedly, at Outis.
<We will accept.> Dante's gear clicked.
"We accept your terms," Faust said.
Penelope produced a second copy of the letter from the folder and slid both across the desk. Dante signed first, precise and unhurried. Faust. Ishmael. Rodion, who pressed too hard with the pen. Heathcliff, who held the pen like he was stabbing something.
The copies were separated. One remained on Penelope's desk. One was passed to Dante.
The meeting was over, yet nobody moved.
It was Heathcliff who broke first, shifting in his chair with the energy of a man who had been sitting still for too long. "Right. So we're done."
"We're done," Penelope confirmed. She capped her pen.
The sinners began to rise. Coats, chairs, the low shuffle of conclusion. Dante was already moving toward the door. Rodion stood, glanced once more at Penelope, then at Outis.
Outis had still not moved.
"What," she said, "was that."
Her voice was shaky. It was so uncharacteristic of her, usually so full of authority, that the words hung there, stripped of all command.
"The meeting?" Penelope's expression was calm. "It is concluded."
"That wasn't about a Bough," Outis said. She pushed her chair back and stood, the scraping sound loud in the silence. "That was about Ithaca."
Penelope didn't answer. She looked at Outis with those same grey eyes, the same unreadable calm. The lilies on the desk seemed to mock the silence.
"And me," Outis said. She took a step toward the desk. "It was about me."
Penelope finally broke the stare, looking down at the single letter of engagement on her desk. "The agreement is signed. Limbus Company is now contracted to retrieve the Golden Bough for Ithaca." Her tone was businesslike, dismissive. "Your involvement in this, and Ithaca's, will conclude forty-eight hours after the delivery."
Outis stopped. She stared at the back of the pen in Penelope's hand. She looked at the lilies. She looked at the smoggy city outside.
"What did he mean," Outis said, her voice now barely a whisper, "about an offer? What does G Corp want with Ithaca? What could they want?”
Penelope put the pen down. She looked at the sinners, a clear sign. The meeting was over.
"Odysseus."
The name was quiet. A stone dropped in a still pool. The ripples spread across the room, catching everyone.
Outis flinched. That name was foreign to her now.
"You have been dead for eleven years," Penelope said. She looked at Outis, her blank expression gaining sparks of anger.
"You left," Penelope said. "You left me to pick up your pieces. You left me your company, your name, your reputation, and your debts. You left me to navigate the politics of a City that was suddenly very, very interested in why Ithaca's brilliant CEO had vanished overnight. You left me to deal with the secrecy and the greed of the wings. You left me with a post-war office on the verge of collapse, and a Bough in its basement that had suddenly become the most talked-about object in the District."
She looked at Odysseus- no, at the sinner in front of her. She looked at her uniform. She looked at the silent clockwork head of her manager.
"I don’t think you should be asking me what’s going on. Surely, your genius, strategic mind of a general,” she spat out the word like poison, “should have ascertained the power vacuum that you left behind would’ve had such consequences on your precious office.What do you think it's been like? That I've been sitting here, waiting?"
Penelope stood up. She walked over to the window and stood with her back to the room.
"G Corp wants to absorb Ithaca," she said, her voice flat. "We sit on a valuable border. We are unaffiliated. They have been trying to undermine me for years. Antinous is their lead negotiator. He is… persistent."
She turned around. Her eyes were cold.
"They are not the only ones."
"I didn't-"
"Don't." Penelope's voice cut through the air. "Don't you dare stand there and tell me what you did or didn't mean to do. You ran. You were always good at that. Running away. From your promises, from your responsibilities. From me."
She looked at the sinners, a sweeping glance. "This is not your concern. The agreement stands. Retrieve the Bough. Bring it here. You will have your forty-eight hours. Then you will leave."
She looked at Outis one last time.
"And you."
Penelope walked back to her desk. She leant forwards, towards Outis, and for a second, Dante thought she might strike her.
“Tell me, Odysseus. What deal did you make? Why on earth was Antinous talking about Dias? What could Lady Dias possibly have to do with Ithaca?” She laughed, but the sound was hollow, sharp with bitterness.
Outis said nothing.
Penelope watched her. Her laugh faded. Her expression became unreadable again as the silence stretched longer.
”Penelope…” Outis hesitated.
"Ah,” she said, straightening up. “I see. Nothing’s changed. Eleven years, and you still trust no one but yourself.”
She looked at Outis for a long moment. She looked at her uniform. At the name tag that said nobody, nothing, no one. At the woman who had her wife’s face and her wife’s name but had fled so far from her that she was now nothing but a stranger.
No.
Penelope looked at her and looked at her and the worst part, the part that had been true from the moment she walked through the door, was that she wasn't a stranger. That was the whole problem. Eleven years and she was still exactly legible, still exactly readable, still the same woman who had stood in their doorway with her bag already packed and her mind already made and her mouth unable to form the word goodbye.
Some people you never stop knowing.
Penelope wished, not for the first time and not for the last, that she was one of them. A ghost would have been easier. A ghost wouldn't be standing there in her office, looking at her, with all of the unspoken history hanging between them like the city’s smog.
Penelope was tired.
"What do you think he'll do, when he finds out you're here?"
Antinous. She meant Antinous.
"What do you think they'll all do, when they find out that you're back?"
Her gaze shifted, moving past Outis to the silent, clockwork manager of Limbus Company, a metallic face with no expression and no memory and no past to speak of. A clean slate.
She wasn't asking for an answer. Outis knew she wasn't asking for an answer.
"Get out," Penelope said. "Please." And her composure finally cracked. The last word was almost a whisper. "Just get out of my office."
Rodion was the one who put a hand on Outis’s shoulder. The touch was tentative, almost afraid. Outis flinched, turning her head as if to bite, but stopped when she saw who it was. Her shoulders slumped. She seemed to shrink, the military posture dissolving into a boneless weariness.
Dante turned to the door.
The walk back through the beige corridors was like a procession of the damned. The elevator chimed, a cheerful little sound that felt like a mockery. Outis stared at her reflection in the elevator’s mirror. She looked haggard.
The lobby doors slid open onto the street. The City’s humid, smoggy air rushed in to meet them, a wall of noise and heat and decay after the sterile silence of the office.
Heathcliff raised his arms and stretched, his back producing a series of cracks loud enough to make Sinclair wince. "Well," he said, settling. "That was a right proper clusterfuck. Now who's gonna tell me what the bleeding hell that was about?"