The handset stayed where it had fallen, heavy and black against the wavy, ruined floor.

  After that day, no one spoke of the root telephone again in Mavis’s presence.

  Not openly, anyway.

  They repaired the room. They poured new concrete. They replaced the desk with a metal one bolted to the ground. They scrubbed the walls where the old plaster had blistered and flaked. They put the handset back precisely where it belonged, centred on the desk like an offering.

  And then they locked the door.

  Mavis didn’t ask to see it again. She told herself she didn’t care. She told herself she had more important things: food, warmth, a bed, the long corridors of this underground city, and the war—always the war.

  The war became routine.

  At first, it had been a thing she did to prove she could. To show them she was useful. To show herself she wasn’t just a problem they were trying to manage with clean sheets and careful words.

  Then it became a thing she did because they asked.

  Then it became a thing she did because it was easier than sitting still.

  Days were scheduled now. People planned around her like she was weather.

  She ate breakfast—real breakfast, eggs sometimes, bread that wasn’t stale and hard as stone. She began to recognise faces in the cafeteria. Some still flinched. Some avoided her eyes. But fewer moved away so abruptly now; fewer spilled their trays or dropped their cutlery when she passed.

  The first changes were small.

  A cook, trembling, once asked, “Would you like more?” instead of silently ladling her portion and stepping back.

  A medic nodded to her in the corridor without bowing.

  A soldier in the rec room—one of Monica’s friends—said, “Hey,” like it was ordinary.

  Mavis learned names. Not all of them, but enough.

  She learned the layout of the complex without Francis’s hand on her elbow. She learned that the third hallway on the right near the vehicle bay always smelled faintly of diesel, no matter how often they cleaned it. She learned that the infirmary was kept too cold because the machines demanded it. She learned the sound of the nightly shift change, the clack of boots like a metronome in the distance.

  And she learned how to exist among people without breaking everything she touched.

  At first she still crushed doorknobs by accident. Still dented metal railings when she moved too quickly. Still left subtle warps in the floor when she got angry and forgot her strength.

  But she tried.

  Francis noticed.

  He never praised her like the generals did, never bowed or called her “Supreme Commander” unless someone else was listening and it was necessary. He spoke to her like he had in the lab—quiet, careful, like she was a person rather than a phenomenon.

  Sometimes, when she was in a good mood, she let herself believe she was.

  They started taking walks—if you could call it that, underground. Long loops through the hydroponics corridor where pale leaves grew under artificial light. Past the classrooms where children of officers were taught by exhausted adults reading from salvaged textbooks. Past the storage rooms where ration crates were stacked like bricks in a wall.

  In those moments, Mavis felt almost… settled.

  Then the radios crackled and the routine shifted.

  A new incursion. A new bombardment. A new push at the perimeter.

  And Mavis would go.

  They stopped sending jets. They stopped sending tanks. They stopped sending men to die unless it was unavoidable. They sent Mavis.

  She became the spearhead, the shield, the storm.

  Enemy trenches didn’t so much fall as unmake. Supply convoys didn’t explode; they ceased to be. Fortified ridges didn’t collapse in dramatic blasts; they simply became sand, smoothed by invisible hands.

  It was efficient. It was terrifying. It was, from the perspective of her commanders, miraculous.

  From the perspective of everyone else, it was the end of the world continuing—just with better organisation.

  Weeks turned into months.

  The anti-Mavis coalition—what remained of it—fractured under pressure. Outposts abandoned overnight. Units disappeared into the wasteland. Whole factions that had once sworn never to kneel began sending messengers under white flags, trembling, begging to defect.

  The pro-Mavis side welcomed them publicly, always on camera, always in carefully staged scenes.

  General Arnold stood beneath banners and spoke into microphones salvaged from the old world.

  “We do not seek war,” he would say, voice solemn. “We seek stability. We seek peace. We are responding only to aggression. Lay down your arms and you will be spared.”

  And behind him, always, there was the implication: or she will come.

  Mavis watched some of these broadcasts from the security room with Francis, the screens casting harsh light across their faces.

  “She’s a murderer,” a captured anti-Mavis officer shouted in one clip, being led through a corridor with hands bound. “You’ve sold your souls!”

  Francis muted the audio before Mavis could hear more.

  Mavis stared at the silent moving mouth on the screen and felt something twist inside her—something like anger, but also something like shame. She couldn’t tell which came first anymore.

  “You’re winning,” Francis said quietly, trying to frame it as reassurance.

  Mavis’s eyes stayed on the screen. “They’re not wrong.”

  Francis didn’t answer.

  He couldn’t lie to her. Not about that.

  What he did instead was steer her—gently, like turning a ship.

  “If the war ends,” he said, “maybe people can start… living again.”

  Mavis looked at him then, really looked, and the hardness in her expression softened.

  “You want me to stop,” she said.

  “I want you to have something other than this,” Francis replied.

  “Other than killing,” she said, blunt.

  Francis nodded once.

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  She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, almost resentful: “They’ll never stop hating me.”

  “They might,” Francis said. “Not all. Not right away. But if you end the war… it changes the story. It changes what people tell themselves when they look at you.”

  Mavis gave him a sharp, suspicious glance, as if she could see the strategy in his words.

  “You’re trying to make me… good.”

  “I’m trying to keep you from being alone,” Francis said.

  That landed. It always did.

  And so, when General Arnold floated the idea of formal negotiations—peace talks with the remaining anti-Mavis leadership—Francis added his voice to it, and Mavis, after a long and silent night, agreed.

  “Fine,” she told them. “Bring them here.”

  The generals nearly wept with relief.

  They did not ask what she meant by “here.” They just made it happen.

  They prepared a room for diplomacy the way they prepared for surgery: sterile, controlled, and full of contingency plans that everyone knew were useless if she decided otherwise.

  A long table, flags recreated from memory, water pitchers, microphones. A neutral location was chosen above ground—an old federal building that had been reinforced and cleaned, its windows replaced with thick plates. An honour guard stood at the perimeter not to protect anyone, but to signal legitimacy. Cameras were positioned to record the moment for history.

  The pro-Mavis side arrived in crisp uniforms.

  Mavis arrived last.

  She wore the military uniform they’d given her, the stars on her shoulders that still felt like a joke. Her hair had been washed, brushed, tied back. She looked almost like a normal young woman, if you ignored the way the air seemed to tighten around her, if you ignored the way every person in the room watched her like prey watches a predator.

  Francis walked beside her.

  He had insisted.

  “You don’t have to,” she’d told him earlier, not unkindly.

  “I do,” he’d replied. “I want to.”

  Now, as they entered, the pro-Mavis delegates rose. Some bowed. Some simply stood stiffly, hands clasped, eyes lowered.

  General Arnold gestured to the seat at the head of the table.

  Mavis sat.

  Francis sat to her left.

  On the far side of the table, empty chairs waited like teeth.

  The anti-Mavis delegation arrived under escort.

  Five of them. Two women, three men. All dressed in whatever formal clothing had survived the apocalypse: threadbare suits, a skirt with a patched hem, a tie that had been knotted too tightly as if it could keep fear from spilling out.

  They moved with the composure of people who had already accepted death.

  Their eyes found Mavis and held.

  Not with curiosity.

  With hatred.

  With defiance.

  With something that was almost… relief. As if finally seeing her meant they no longer had to imagine her.

  They sat.

  No one spoke for a moment. The silence stretched, thick as smoke.

  General Arnold began, voice smooth, rehearsed.

  “We appreciate your willingness to meet. We believe this conflict has gone on long enough. We are prepared to offer—”

  One of the anti-Mavis negotiators, a man with sunken cheeks and sharp eyes, cut him off.

  “We didn’t come for your offers,” he said. His voice was steady, almost calm. “We came to deliver terms.”

  A ripple moved through the pro-Mavis side—surprise, irritation, fear.

  Mavis’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she said nothing.

  The negotiator turned his gaze to her directly, as if Arnold and the rest were furniture.

  “You,” he said. “You are the problem. The war ends when you leave.”

  Monica, seated further down, stiffened. Francis’s jaw tightened.

  General Arnold leaned forward. “With respect, that is not a realistic—”

  “Respect?” the negotiator barked, suddenly louder. “Do not speak to me of respect. She is a murderer. She has single-handedly killed millions of innocent people—if not billions. We cannot accept that. We cannot legitimise it by pretending we can negotiate with her like she’s a head of state.”

  Mavis’s fingers curled on the table.

  Another negotiator—a woman with hollow eyes and a scar across her lip—spoke, voice quieter but sharper.

  “We have one demand,” she said, staring at Mavis. “Leave this planet. Or at the very least, leave this country. Disappear. Go wherever monsters go when they’ve finished eating the world.”

  Mavis’s chest tightened.

  Leave.

  As if she had somewhere else.

  As if the earth itself wasn’t the only thing she’d ever stood on.

  Francis leaned toward her slightly, barely moving his lips. “Don’t,” he murmured. “Please.”

  The third negotiator—wide-eyed, twitchy with adrenaline, the kind of man who looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks—laughed suddenly, a cracking sound that made everyone flinch.

  “And you know what’s going to happen?” he said, pointing a shaking finger down the table at General Arnold and the others. “When you’ve won—when the war is over—she will turn on you. You can’t trust her. You think she’s your weapon, your god, your saviour? She’ll get bored. She’ll get hungry. She’ll decide you’re in the way.”

  He leaned forward, eyes wild, staring at Mavis like he wanted to burn her with his gaze.

  “You think you’re safe because you kneel?” he hissed. “You think she respects you because you flatter her? She doesn’t respect anyone. She doesn’t even understand what she’s done.”

  Mavis’s vision narrowed.

  The room seemed to tilt. Sounds dulled, distant, like she was underwater again.

  All she could hear was the echo of the word ‘leave’.

  All she could see was their faces—defiant, hateful, righteous.

  They thought they were martyrs already. They had walked into her presence expecting to die, and their expectation made them brave. It made them cruel.

  They wanted her gone.

  They wanted her to be nowhere.

  And she had been nowhere her whole life.

  In a box.

  In a cell.

  In a world that now wanted to erase her again.

  Mavis stood.

  The chair scraped back loudly, a scream of metal against stone.

  Every pro-Mavis delegate froze.

  Francis rose half an inch from his seat, instinctive, his hand lifting as if he could physically stop what was coming.

  “Mavis,” he said, voice strained.

  Mavis didn’t look at him.

  She looked at the negotiators.

  “I tried,” she said softly, and her voice, so quiet, made the room feel colder than any shout could have.

  The negotiator with the scar held her gaze. “Do it,” she said, almost daring her. “Prove me right.”

  Mavis’s expression went blank.

  Then she moved.

  It was fast—too fast for most eyes to track. A flicker of motion and the air between Mavis and the far side of the table seemed to fold.

  The wide-eyed man’s head snapped back as if yanked by an invisible hook. For half a second his mouth opened in surprise.

  Then his body was simply… not cohesive anymore. Flesh turned to smoke, bone to dust, blood to a fine red mist that sprayed outward before Mavis’s power caught most of it and erased it midair.

  But not all.

  A light spatter—warm, unmistakable—hit the faces of two pro-Mavis delegates nearest the impact.

  They didn’t even wipe it away.

  They just sat there, eyes glassy, too frightened to move.

  The scarred woman screamed once, a raw sound, and tried to stand.

  Mavis’s gaze touched her and her scream cut off like a cord had been severed. Her body collapsed inward, compressing into itself, becoming something small and dense, a wet crunch of matter folding until it was no longer recognisably human. A split second later and nothing remained.

  The first negotiator—the one who’d spoken calmly at the start—didn’t run. He didn’t beg.

  He stared at Mavis, face pale but proud.

  “You see?” he whispered. “This is what you are.”

  Mavis stepped closer, slow now, almost deliberate. She leaned in over the table, close enough that he could smell soap in her hair, close enough that he could see the green in her eyes.

  “You wanted me to leave,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  Mavis’s hand touched his cheek—almost gentle.

  Then his skin greyed, dried, cracked, as if his body had been aged a thousand years in a heartbeat. His eyes clouded. He sagged forward onto the table like a puppet with its strings cut. His body disintegrated into dust.

  The remaining two negotiators scrambled back, chairs clattering, but there was nowhere to go. They were trapped by their own courage, by the guards, by the walls, by her.

  Mavis didn’t even look at them for long.

  A flick.

  A blink.

  They were gone.

  The room was quiet.

  Not a reverent quiet. Not a diplomatic quiet.

  A stunned, animal quiet.

  Mavis stood at the head of the table, breathing evenly, as if she’d only swatted flies.

  For a long moment she thought: I shouldn’t have done that.

  It wasn’t regret for them.

  It was the sudden, sick awareness of what this would do to the one thing Francis had tried to build for her: a story where she could be more than terror.

  She looked at the pro-Mavis delegates.

  They stared back.

  Faces speckled with fine red dots.

  Eyes wide.

  Mouths closed.

  And in that silence, Mavis felt a familiar fear rise in her: Now they’ll hate me. Now even Francis—

  Then one of the pro-Mavis delegates—a thin man with trembling hands, seated two chairs down—stood abruptly.

  He began to clap.

  Slowly at first. One clap, then another. His palms shook with each impact.

  His eyes were fixed on Mavis with a desperate brightness that wasn’t admiration so much as survival.

  The sound cut through the room like a knife.

  Another delegate stood, almost stumbling, and joined in.

  Then another.

  Then another.

  Soon the whole pro-Mavis side was applauding, rising to their feet, faces rigid with forced smiles and terror disguised as devotion.

  “Long live Mavis,” someone said hoarsely, as if testing the words.

  “Yes,” another echoed quickly. “Long live Mavis.”

  The applause grew louder, a roar filling the sterile diplomatic room.

  Mavis stood still, absorbing it.

  She felt the weight of their fear in every clap.

  She felt the lie in their praise.

  And somewhere inside her, buried beneath the rage and the hunger and the loneliness, something small and bitter whispered:

  So this is peace.

  She turned her head slightly.

  Francis was still seated, frozen, his face pale, his eyes fixed not on the empty chairs where the negotiators had been, but on her.

  He didn’t applaud.

  He didn’t bow.

  He just looked at her like he was trying to find the exact moment he’d lost her.

  Mavis’s throat tightened.

  For a second she wanted to run to him, to explain, to say “they wanted to erase me”, to say “I tried”, to say “I don’t know how to be what you want”.

  But the room was watching. The generals were watching. The applause was still thunderous.

  Mavis lifted her chin, forcing her expression into something cold and royal.

  She let them clap.

  She let them believe.

  And she told herself she didn’t care.

  Not even as the faint flecks of blood dried on the faces of her sycophantic “followers,” proof of what she really was, no matter how many flags they hung or speeches they made.