The Woman with a Bird Tattoo

"I'm of course getting the bed, considering I'm a guest here, so I'll just share it with Addy. You... you can take the couch", the mage declared like there would be no objections.

Nigel could do nothing but stare at the girl as he was speechless.

Audrye had been called to the Knight mansion to patch them up – again – and had returned with Treasure who apparently had no place else to go since the mansion had burned down. And from what Audrye had explained, the culprit had been some looney ex-Knight who had been after Treasure. Nigel could come up with so many reasons why someone would be after Treasure for blood and wholeheartedly blamed the mage for the destruction of the London Knight's HQ.

It seemed that the mage had not gained much popularity while her stay here. Weston-Pryce had left for a hotel with Emma and the unit's Boss had gone to solve the matter at Weston-Pryce senior's mansion (even bigger than what the Knights had occupied). Neither had asked the mage to join them. McGilligan and the Knight's secretary had their own places, and the mage had not been welcomed there either. So. Audrye had invited her to stay at their place. Of all places. Nigel could not find any of his muscles involved in smiling at this moment.

"This is my house", he said coldly. Treasure shrugged this notion off as if it was insignificant.

"It's also Addy's. And I'm a guest. Now chop-chop! I want new linen on the bed!"

Nigel gritted his teeth. Technically Audrye did not own any portion of the apartment, but he was not going to drag her into this.

"Oh, please, Nikki, just bare with it. It's just for the night!" Audrye asked with pleading eyes. And he just couldn't say no...

***

"Just for the night, she bloody said!" Nigel grumbled, keeping his eyes on the holographic blueprint while instructing Emma where she should nail the iron beam. The woman easily held the heavy item up with one hand, while hammering with her right.

The Knights had abandoned their destroyed mansion at the outskirts of London. Since they would have had to rebuild it anyways, they had decided to move their HQ closer to action as it were. And so the Knights had bought the property where there had previously been a fire station and more recently a wiped-out Pyro cultist lair. Nigel could see why. Being saviors by profession, a fire station was actually quite fitting. And the previous cultists had already done some work to the underground portion of the station, meaning that they could finish the repairs quite quickly, in stead of starting from scratch with the old place.

Of course, since the responsibility of the architecture had been given to Quentin, the mad scientist woman of course used her imagination to make the place as high-tech and quirky as she could possibly think of. She had asked Nigel personally to help her with some of her more unique ideas. This was why Nigel was now here, mainly supervising the inbuilt cabling, but also helping with keeping with the blueprints, since Quentin had the habit of doing it on-go as it were.

Emma had finished with the beam and she leaned her back on the wall-frame while wiping sweat off her forehead.

"How long has it been now? A week?"

"An eternity." Nigel wasn't usually one for exaggerations, but this one came from the heart.

"Still keeping you off the bedroom, eh? Oh, don't glare at me like that! I sympathize, I really do, V"

Nigel sighed. He pointed at the next beam and she lifted it again with deceiving ease.

"Your sympathy won't solve my bloody problem though."

"Well we finished the cellar bedrooms already, I think I can find a bed to share if you want to bunk in mine", she offered, not managing to keep a grin off her face.

"Is this a suggestion about you and Weston-Pryce, again?" The woman looked like caught with her hand in the cookie jar. He rolled his eyes. She had been in an increasingly silly mood lately, almost to the point of irritation. He missed the playfully grinning yet business-like mercenary she had been. She had insisted that she was having fun though, just fun. Although she did indeed seem very happy, he had noticed the looks she gave to the snob, when she thought that no one else was watching. He knew it all too well, for it was the same than what he had looked like whenever he was around Audrye.

"What does he really know about you, anyways?"

Emma gave this some thought.

"More than most people, I dare say. He knows I've been in the Marines, and about my merc jobs afterwards. He knows I love the Reds – although D's not much into football. He has seen the tattoos – which is a rare thing, actually. And he knows I like to be on top", she finished with an even wider grin. This didn't change his expression the slightest.

"And what about your arm? Does he know about that?"

Emma could not face his stare. She bit her lip and turned to her hammering.

"I don't show it to anyone, you know that. I'm sure he knows there's something about it, but that's it. And it's the way I intend to keep it."

"For how long? They are bound to find out about it sooner or later. How do you think he'll feel about you then?" The pounding of metal on metal stopped. Emma had rested her head on her fist, which still held the hammer. Her shoulder-length hair was curtaining her face, but now revealing the tattoo on her neck. T-100. They had called her The Terminator in the corps, long before her 'accident'. Nowadays she thought it must have been an omen and grinned – albeit always with sadness – when thinking back on those days, that name and the tattoo. Nigel felt almost sorry for asking her these questions when they clearly were the ones that hurt her the most.

It had been a miracle for her to have survived at all. She should have died at the hands of that doctor. She certainly shouldn't have survived until Quentin had gotten there. Surely, the procedure should have killed her. And her mind should have shattered at the trauma, at least post stress. A miracle, indeed.

"I don't know..." she whispered. Finally she turned back to face him, holding her left arm with her right hand. That mechanical arm was covered by a specially made sleeve that kept it completely hidden. Since the outer cover of the arm was shaped exactly like a normal human arm, no-one would know the difference from under the fabric. But Nigel knew what was underneath. It was a maze of fibre-optic cables. Nano-technology combined with his special magic had allowed them to join the arm directly to her nervous system and muscle tissue, so that she could move it just as a normal limb. Of course, the continuous electrical current leaked into her natural body, messing up some of her senses, but having jitters every now and then was a small price to pay for a working limb, in Nigel's opinion.

However, his eyes were drawn to the two horizontal scars on her right arm. He had heard that she had slit the first one a day after waking up, screaming in horror. She had only calmed down when she had witnessed the thick red blood that had burst from the wound. Although she might have just passed out from the blood loss, Nigel guessed. The second one was when she had come to Quentin to upgrade the cassis to a more flexible one. Again, she had stolen the scalpel right after post-op, wanting to make sure she was still human.

Nigel could not understand. When they had offered to switch the cover to a more skin-like material – the same they had used with Nuu – Emma had declined. She had said that she wanted a reminder of what had happened. It made no sense what so ever. It must be that women's logic everyone was talking about.

Maybe it was like a tattoo to her now. A frightful tattoo, of the time when she had almost died. Or a better symbol of being a Terminator...

"I don't know. And I don't intend to find out", she finally concluded with determination.

***

Of course after saying something like that it was bound to happen quite soon. And so it was only a few days later, after the new HQ was practically finished, when the Knights were having a small party to celebrate the new mansion. All of Audrye's colleagues were there, as was Quentin, who cheerily chatted to everyone getting into the finer details of the mansion's high-end upgrades. For some reason, Nigel had also been dragged here. Luckily, Audrye was mostly in the company of the Mexican – Roho, his name must have been – which left Nigel alone with Rei. No one paid him much attention, except for McGilligan, who also seemed to be a bit of a fish-out-of-water.

Only those two noticed at first how the Knight's secretary, Melanie Heartfelt, approached Emma as she was waiting for Weston-Pryce to bring her some food. The man himself seemed to had been caught up in an argument with his little sister, so he didn't hear the first lines of insults the jealous woman spat on the soldier. Nigel really couldn't understand what all of them saw in the snob, it must have had something to do with him being so athletic or something., but it seemed that the secretary had been hiding a crush on the man for some time now and did not like losing him to some up-and-coming newbie Knight. Hearing her words, she also seemed to resent that Emma wasn't particularly feminine, definitely had no style and was too low-bred for an upper-class bloke like Weston-Pryce. Emma took it all surprisingly calmly, just nodding to the other woman, clearly letting the slander slide right off her.

"I don't really care if he doesn't care", Emma shrugged. It only ignited the other woman's fury even further.

"I'll make him care", she hissed, with pure hatred in her eyes.

"I'll show them all what you really are, you freak!" Melanie shouted so all eyes turned on them. And all eyes turned on Emma as the raging woman had ripped off her sleeve, exposing her arm for all to see.

The usually very unwavering soldier was now pale as a ghost as all blood had escaped her face. Desperately trying to cover her arm with her other one, she quivered under the stares. And with Melanie's mocking words still ringing, she turned and escaped.

Nigel snapped his laptop shut, but Weston-Pryce was quicker to move. To his credit, he seemed to hiss something to Melanie to make the woman shut up immediately in shock, after rushing after Emma.

Audrye was talking agitated with Matt and Quentin. The Boss was demanding an explanation from the rejected woman with so many swear words dropped in between the actual words that his whole sentence was probably rated R. McGilligan and Roho were baffled, they had clearly been taken aback by her specialness. Without anyone noticing, Nigel reopened Rei and run a program he had made, just in case.

It couldn't have been considered eavesdropping if he was mainly taking care that she wouldn't harm herself, right? The program executed. The computer in Emma's wrist – more compact than any smartphone on market and exponentially more powerful – was now giving him both visual and audio. Although no-one was still paying him any attention, he still put on his earphones.

She was sobbing. There was knocking on the door. Weston-Pryce was indeed a gentleman 'til the end. She told him to beat it. He wouldn't go away. With some corny line that Nigel would have to memorize for possible future needs he managed to get Emma to let him in. He told her that he didn't care about the arm, that Emma was human enough for him. Then the Boss had come to the door, asking if they were "fucking all right in there". With a snicker that came after, they were apparently going to fulfil that to the letter and Nigel snapped Rei close again, blushing. His final image had been of Emma's bare backside, reflected from the mirror as Weston-Pryce was hauling her up to his lap. And on that back was a large red bird, ready to take flight. He recognised it from the logo of her favourite football club, but here he wanted it to symbolise a fresh new start for her, as accepted.

"Be a Phoenix."