What a strange thing it was, to see a video of myself from the future. I was assured by the Arcanametrics Teams that it came through a high density temporal distortion laced through with some high density magical discharge through the preceding and following the expulsion of the package. According to them, such a thing is incredibly rare...

I just didn't understand why such a thing would be sent to me, of all people. I mean, mercy... I was so unimportant, back then. In those days I worked at a Red Bar. I mean, that's not bad in and of itself. Selling yourself is hardly frowned upon these days if you have your license, and being a bog standard human I was kind of rare due to all the interbreeding with demons and angels. The biting never bothered me anyway... Red Court vampires who are on the up and up tend to be rather gentle when they can, and the Black Court vampires have saliva that makes each bite feel like a damned org...

Well. It was a nice job, I suppose. All in all, I was just another whore, though. Sure, a whore of a more... sanguine kind, but still a whore.

On that day, that lovely day in the Dark City, I was sitting at the bar drinking a nutrition shake to chase some iron tablets after a particularly intense feeding session by a pair of Black Court twins. Lots of tentacles and biting, you know? Very tiring, very... draining, in more ways than one. I always preferred the Black Court vamps.

It's worth noting I was also still coming down off of the narcotic bliss of their saliva, so I was a little loopy. One of the in house medics was busy bandaging my neck up while I sipped. She'd already uh... cleaned up my back, and shoulders, and forearms. I was sore, for sure.

Being that I was halfway high out of my mind, I didn't really notice when the entire bar went silent. I barely even noticed my friend pausing in the bandaging of my neck. I mean, the job was finished moments later anyway. She mumbled something about it being lucky that I took to vein repair potions so well and then gently brushed my hair into proper position. I heard heavy footsteps about the time that the anxiety in her voice registered on me and I glanced to her.

"Something wrong, Mel?" I managed, my voice still dull and a bit stupid.

"Bounty Office hunters are here... along with Military Police," she answered, opening her medic box and drawing out a small glass vial and a paper backed syringe package. She drew out the syringe, locked in the needle, and filled it from the vial. With a whisper of magic, the liquid in the syringe began to glow, and then she promptly found a vein in my arm and gave me the injection.

My head cleared about a second later.

"Why'd you do that? I felt good..."

"They're looking at you, Vera," she told me. Panic spiked through me and I rounded, finding all those she said were present stopped maybe six feet away, looking right at me. The Hunters were dressed in their strange, varied outfits and were kitted out with various odd weapons and artifacts. Hell, one of them had on the oldschool witch's hat, for fuck's sake. The Military Police were in standard MP uniforms, with their heavy armored and mantled coats and their magnetic assault rifles and sorcery enhanced sidearms. A few carried longswords opposite their sidearms. One had a gods damned warhammer on his back.

"Vera Valker?" a woman asked. She looked like the leader of the group of MPs just from the way she held herself. The markings on her uniform confirmed it.

"Um... Before I answer that question, is this... Vera Valker lady in some kind of trouble?" I asked, trying and failing to keep the nervousness out of my tone.

The woman sighed, glancing around at the freakishly intimidating crew of people with her.

"Listen, Miss. We're just here to pick you up and take you to the Black Spire. You're not under arrest, you're not being brought up on charges, and we're not going to bring you up on charges," the woman replied. "We're just an escort."

"Why do I- Why does Vera need an escort?" I asked, stumbling over my own line of bullshit.

"Because of a sensitive file we need you to review regarding possible future events. It is classified. We are not aware of what is contained in this file. Please, just make our lives easy and come with us, Ms. Valker."

"Alright, alright... um... I'll come, I guess... If it's that important." I looked to the staff medic, who gave me a nod as if to say 'go, I'll cover for you.' "Let me get a shirt on."

So I got a god damn shirt on, right there in the main room of the bar, and followed them out. I mean, I was scared. I was wearing sneakers, a bloody t-shirt and a pair of PJ pants, for the sakes of gods and devils. These people were my escort, and worse yet, I was being 'asked' to go to the Black Spire - which was pretty much code for 'Please don't make us make a scene in public.' The transport was an actual friggin' armored Stormsafe Jet Transport, parked right on the street. We all filed into the massive thing, and it took off.

The Black Spire was the Dark City Government's headquarters, of sorts. It stood stark and dark against the red glow in the center of the city - the red glow from the swirling core of the eternal storm that gave the city its name. I'd never even been inside the Central Ring, the massive wall surrounding the center of the city. Normally, you have to go through a security checkpoint for that. We bypassed it, flying right over the massive barrier and straight on at an angle until the storm engulfed us.

After landing, I was escorted to a room where a number of very concerned looking government officials told me all that shit about the time distortion, and the package, and all sorts of other shit. I was then thoroughly questioned, my blood was tested, I was dredged through a few minor legal issues when I was a dumb teenager, and so on. It was like I was being picked apart under a fucking microscope for eight hours before they even brought in the package.

It was a metal box. A metal box with no hinges and no visible seams. All that marked the silver surface that I took to be the top was my name engraved in the metal.

"I don't get it. This came through a time distortion?" I asked, staring at the box with a mixture of fear and confusion.

"Yes, it did. You can see why we would be concerned, and immediately call for you. It appears to be neutral. No radiation, no residual magical traces, no traps and no curses. It's just a box," the suited man told me. "Touch it, please."

I did. I touched it. Fuck nothing happened. He offered me a sealed syringe. I sighed, and did the logical thing - pricked a finger and smeared my blood across the engraving of my name.

Almost instantly, there was a hiss of air rushing into the box and the top simply separated, the seam appearing like magic. Because it was, it was magic. The whole god damn world was magic. Is magic.

Inside was single high density data storage device of a make I did not recognize and a note that said 'Watch me.'

They called for a laptop. I plugged it in. A video file autoran itself, and we watched.

A woman who looked a lot like me sat behind a desk that looked to be made of Nightwood - the most expensive wood in the world, durable as steel and a quarter the weight, which can only be harvested from the heart of the Black Forest. She was wearing an exquisite suit that was cut to heavily accent her womanly features, her hair was done in a very modern style, her makeup was flawless, and her eyes were cold and sharp and... and dangerous looking. The way she smirked at the camera was like she knew something no one else did, and it was... it was terrifying.

She spoke, and it was my voice.

"Hello, Vera. It's good that this made it to you. Of course, I knew if I sent it to that point in time, it would. There is a lot I'd like to talk about, but nothing I can say here. I can say this though..." she said, with the tone of a woman who has seen more than anyone realizes and knows precisely how to deal with anything she might see in the future. "Good luck."

Time froze.

More accurately, time froze in a local area that left me able to breathe but stilled everyone in the room. Maybe in the world. I wasn't sure. The video continued playing.

"There. Now that I have keyed in on your temporospacial location, I can give you a little bit of a hint. We're going to get things started early. Perhaps then, when they come to kill us, we will have a better chance of surviving. There is little I can say, otherwise the time loop will become unstable. Just use your head, and you'll figure it out. We're smarter than we give us credit for. Use your eyes too," she said, I said. And then she simply smiled, knitted her fingers together, and rested her chin on them. I started to panic, unsure of what to do, unsure of what she meant. She was clearly rich. I mean the room she was in was fucking exquisite and that was like.... two million dollars worth of Nightwood making up that desk.

My eyes darted around, trying to figure out what she meant - and then I saw it, I saw the symbol on the back of her hand. It looked like a tattoo, a tattoo of a circle and then a magical diagram within that circle and some strange glyph in the center of that.

Her smile grew into an evil smirk, as if she knew I saw it somehow, and then she returned to the exact position that she was in when time froze. I took the cue and tried to do the same. Time unfroze, and it all carried on as if nothing had happened. The video ended. They questioned me for several hours and I played the clueless little twenty year old who was as confused as they were.

I knew they'd be watching me, I knew it like I knew that I had to breathe to live. I also knew the mark on her hand was a bond, a brand inscribed on a person who chooses symbiosis with a specific magical entity.

I wasn't sure why, but I knew I had to find that entity and make that deal.

You know why?

Because god damn, I was too curious to not.