Tissue Thin

This occurs the Night after the incident at Dennis Shipping

Elysium that evening was held at the upper gallery of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, after hours, as it often was when Prince Helene Panhard wished to remind the city what civilization looked like.

Marble. Silence. Control.

Alec stood alone before a massive 17th-century oil painting of a battlefield, hands clasped behind his back.

He did not turn when she approached.

Prince Panhard did not hurry. She never hurried.

“Alec.”

Her voice was low, cultured, Parisian silk stretched over steel.

He turned and inclined his head. “Your Grace.”

A long pause. The kind that forces confession without words.

“You defend them still,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

Alec exhaled slowly. “They are effective.”

“They are loud.”

Her eyes shifted toward the painting. Bodies strewn across mud. Smoke choking the horizon.

“You mistake direction for control.”

He bowed again.

“With respect, my Prince—they are hunting the Circulatory System. That is not a small adversary. The warehouse was a calculated risk.”

“Calculated?” she asked, softly. “Four mortal corpses left slashed and bludgeoned in a parking lot. Two more mortal security guards dead inside and two hamstrung, barely alive. Should I not mention the woman in the office with a skull fracture who was left on a couch with encephalic fluid leaking from her ears? Perhaps the TBI she suffered will impair her recollections. Oh and let’s not forget the mortal on the basement stairwell. They even killed the dog.”

She sighed.

“Cameras recording everything. A panic alarm pressed that drew human first responders. Do you think the Second Inquisition on scene won’t be able to trace this to them?”

“If it pleases my Prince I’ve taken measures to clean it up.”

Her gaze sharpened. She wasn’t finished.

“And a Malkavian, car screeching down the street and through the gates, then her Gangrel pet plays Captain America with a car door he tore the vehicle.”

Alec said nothing.

Prince Panhard sighed again.

“They did not retrieve the girl.”

“No.”

“They acquired… intel.”

“Yes.”

She stepped closer. 

“Intel does not excuse spectacle.”

Alec met her eyes. Dangerous, but deliberate.

“They are motivated. The girl is family.”

“Family,” she repeated, faint disdain threading through the word. “The Masquerade is family.”

Silence settled between them like falling ash.

“You have always been loyal,” she said at last. “I do not hold you responsible for their passions. But passions become contagion. Contagion becomes fire.”

A beat.

“If this continues, Alec, I will send a message.”

He understood what that meant.

Public discipline.

Possibly worse.

He bowed his head slightly.

“I will speak to them.”

“You will do more than speak.”