Chapter 18 – The Silence of the Trickster

【Loki PoV】

Boredom hurt.

The ceiling of my cell glowed a lazy pastel pink, then stubbornly stayed that color.
The furniture floated in a perfect grid, lined up like a showroom.
The air smelled like recycled oxygen and disappointment.
I had never wanted to commit a war crime on a clock this badly in my existence.

“Kai is going to be so proud of me.”

I floated upside down in the middle of the room, arms dangling, hair not moving at all.
Gravity did whatever I told it to, which right now meant nothing, because I was being good.
No reality slides, no spontaneous void pits, no fun.
Just me, the clock over the door, and the slow death of my soul.

“Kai is going to walk in, see how chill I am, and he is literally going to faint.”

The numbers on the digital display ticked one minute forward.
I watched the pixels change, hungry and furious at the same time.
I could have stretched that minute into an hour for everyone else and taken a nap in between.
Instead, I let it pass like a normal person, which felt like chewing glass.

“I’m being so good, this is criminal, this is award worthy, where is my trophy, Kai.”

My couch rotated ninety degrees to the left.
The coffee table spun in the opposite direction.
A stack of books drifted around me in a slow orbit, pages fluttering, covers turning themselves face out, face in.
Nothing exploded, nothing turned into screaming confetti.

“Look at this self control, Loki, look at you slay, look at you respecting boundaries, no cap.”

The guard outside my door cleared his throat.
The sound crackled through the speaker like a bug zapper.
I rolled in the air so I could see him through the small reinforced window.
Miller today, which meant I should be nice, probably.

“You doing okay in there, Loki?”

His voice sounded careful, like he was walking barefoot on broken glass.
He usually sounded like that around me, to be fair.
I dropped from the air and landed on my feet like a gymnast sticking the landing.
The furniture froze mid spin, then gently settled onto the floor.

“Why, Miller, are you worried about me.”

He flinched like I had thrown something, even though I just smiled at the door.
His hand tightened on the tablet he clutched to his chest.
He peered through the little square window, eyes wide, trying to read the room.
Unfortunately for him, my room was unreadable on a good day.

“You’re… quiet today.”

His tone said this was not a compliment.
His tone said he would rather I turned the sprinklers into blood than sat still.
I considered giving him that, just a little, just a tiny, tasteful blood rain.
Then I remembered the promise.

“I am being responsible.”

He blinked twice like the word physically hurt him.
I walked over to the bookshelf instead of snapping my fingers at the tiles under his boots.
One thought, that was all it would take.
Floor is lava, Miller screams, guards panic, I laugh, everyone bonds.

“No. The promise. For Kai.”

My fingers twitched around a glossy magazine instead of reality’s throat.
I pulled it off the shelf, the cover bending slightly, the title burning into my eyeballs.
Healthy Hearts, Healthy Love.
Why humans made everything sound like cereal slogans, I would never understand.

“You, uh, reading something there.”

I flipped the magazine open to the page I had bookmarked with a floating spoon.
Big pink letters screamed, How To Be A Supportive Partner.
I had underlined half the article in neon green marker.
The spoon hovered over a bullet point about active listening.

“Research.”

Silence pooled in the hallway.
Miller shifted his weight, armor creaking, the sound itchy and slow.
I imagined his coffee cup in the break room twitching, then slowly turning into spiders.
Big, soft, fuzzy ones, totally harmless, very cuddly, extremely disruptive.

“No chaos,” I muttered under my breath, just loud enough for me.

The cup turned back into a cup in my mind.
Spiders dissolved into foam hearts and disappointment.
I pointedly read a sentence about validating your partner’s feelings.
Apparently, you were not supposed to mock them while they vented, which seemed fake.

“Well. If you need anything, buzz Control.”

His voice sounded relieved, but also more freaked out.
The door shutter slid down, blocking his face.
The lock field hummed, bright and steady, like a taut wire.
I flopped backward onto the couch and floated it up with me.

“Kai is going to walk in, see me with this magazine, and his brain is going to short out.”

I read the same paragraph for the third time.
Maintain eye contact to show you care.
Do not make jokes about trauma during serious talks.
I circled that one three times and wrote maybe in the margin.

“Kai likes my jokes, even when he pretends he doesn’t, especially when he pretends he doesn’t.”

The colors on the walls shifted from pink to soft teal, then froze again.
I folded myself into a weird sitting position, knees pressed to my chest, book on my shins.
I practiced my smile in the reflection of the metal trim, less teeth, less shark, more approachable chaos.
Every few seconds I checked the clock.

“He is going to come in, and I am going to say, hey Kai, look, I followed your rules.”

The minute hand crawled forward.
My skin buzzed with unused magic.
Reality around me shivered, begging for direction, for a prank, for anything.
I pressed my palms together until my knuckles popped.

“Kai is going to pat my head or something, maybe not literally, but in his heart, emotionally, head pats.”

Time kept being normal, which was rude.
I tried meditating like the article suggested.
Close your eyes, breathe, picture a safe place.
The safe place was Kai rolling his eyes at me, which probably missed the point.

“Kai,” I whispered into the room.

His name cracked like a spark in the air.
The light strips flickered in response, then steadied when I glared at them.
I slid off the couch and planted my feet on the ground.
Pacing felt safer than floating now.

“Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, Kai, I am being so good, you better be ready to hype me up.”

I paced from one wall to the other, five steps each way.
The coffee table drifted behind me like a loyal pet.
Every step I took, I counted another reason he might be late.
Paperwork. Meeting. Warden lecture. Random apocalypse drill.

“He probably got stuck listening to Director Esdeath complain about budget cuts again.”

I snorted, then clapped a hand over my mouth like I was going to get in trouble.
The air vibrated with a laugh that never fully formed.
I checked the clock again.
Five minutes past our usual time.

“Okay, that is nothing, that is fine, traffic, metaphorical traffic, he said that once, I like that one.”

I jumped back onto the couch, cross-legged now, magazine floating in front of me.
The words blurred.
My focus snagged on the empty spot by the door, the shape where he usually stood.
I pictured his crooked half smile when I did something annoying but harmless.

“He is going to come in, see the floor is still here, and probably check my temperature.”

Ten minutes.
The number hit my brain like a hammer wrapped in soft foam.
Not painful yet, just very, very noticeable.
I swallowed, the sound loud in the silence.

“Maybe Thalia went full frost queen again and they needed him there longer.”

The thought slithered through my head and tried to plant a seed.
I slapped it away with a snarl.
I did not care what she did.
She could freeze the whole wing as long as Kai still came to see me.

“He knows the schedule, he loves the schedule, he pretends to hate it, but he loves it, we made it together.”

Fifteen minutes.
My pacing turned into tight circles in the center of the room.
The walls slowed their color cycling even more, as if they were holding their breath.
I felt my grin stretch too wide, too tight.

“Okay, new theory, Director Esdeath chained him to a desk, rude, illegal, I should file a complaint, I should riot.”

I threw myself backward and hovered a few inches above the floor.
The magazine spun lazily above my face.
The article talked about handling disappointment in a relationship.
I almost ripped the page in half.

“He would not ditch me, that is not his thing, that is my thing, historically, conceptually, but I am growing.”

Twenty minutes.
The number landed heavy in my chest.
Not a hammer now, more like a weight tied to a balloon.
I drifted higher without meaning to.

“Okay,” I breathed, taste of ozone on my tongue.

The word echoed in the room and came back strange.
Boredom melted under something sharper, colder.
Suspicion slunk in, slow and careful, like a cat stepping into water.

“Fine. If he is not coming through the door, I am checking the rest of the box.”

I closed my eyes.
The physical room faded like a TV screen dimming.
Underneath it, the real layout of the facility stretched out, a wireframe of power and rules and screaming.
Every cell hummed with its own signature, its own flavor of impossible.

“Hi kids, mommy’s checking on you.”

I brushed my awareness down the hallway first.
The guards flickered as little sparks of mortal fear and caffeine.
Someone in Control had a headache.
Someone else was reading my file again, weirdos.

“Keep scrolling, Loki, find the fun parts.”

Sector Three thrummed with contained rage and teeth.
Sector Five simmered with cursed artifacts chewing on their own curses.
I skimmed past them, barely touching, like skipping stones over an ocean.
None of them were what I wanted.

“Where are you, Kai.”

His presence was always easy to find.
Everyone else bent reality, twisted it, screamed at it.
He walked through it like a glitch, a blank, a pocket of boring that made everything around him pop.
Immunity tasted like static and fresh air.

“Kai, come on, give me a ping.”

I reached for the familiar absence, the outline of his existence in the mental map.
Usually, even off duty, he glowed as a little void spot in the city.
Unreachable by our tricks, annoyingly solid, infuriatingly there.
Today, the map shivered.

“What.”

I pushed harder, spreading my awareness out to the edges of the compound.
The containment fields buzzed in different keys.
The wards in the walls hummed like angry bees.
Cellblock Seven sat where it always sat.

“Found you, frostbite.”

Thalia’s signature usually poured through that wing, thick and heavy.
Old stars, deep water, hungry shadows, all wrapped in perfume and obsession.
She never shut up, even when she pretended to sleep.
Her power bled into the pipes, the wiring, the dreams of the night shift.

“I swear, if you made him cry again, I am going to rearrange your moons.”

I touched Cellblock Seven with my senses.
I expected the usual freezing burn, the echo of her endless voice.
Instead, my awareness slid over empty air.
The whole section felt like a tooth yanked out of a jaw.

“No.”

The word rang louder than a shout.
My eyes snapped open, but I kept the map in my head.
I swept back over the same space, slower this time.
The architecture was still there, the concrete and doors and vents.

“Where is your song, Thalia.”

Nothing sang.
No frostbite, no cosmic pressure, no stupid dramatic metaphors about longing.
Cellblock Seven read like a turned off screen, dead pixels in the middle of all that color.
The wards in that area buzzed in confusion, like they had lost what they were supposed to hold.

“Okay. Okay, okay, maybe they knocked her out, maybe she is sedated, maybe, maybe, maybe.”

I tasted for Kai again.
He should have shown up as a clean gap in that emptiness, a neat hole where nothing could touch.
Nothing bent around him.
Even nothing had to make space for Kai.

“Come on, Kai, poke a god, you like doing that.”

The map stayed wrong.
No neat void, no anchor, no annoying little blip of indifference that made my chest feel weird.
The absence inside the absence burned.
I curled my fingers into the air.

“She did not.”

My voice came out flat.
Too calm.
The magazine over my face burst into ash without drama, paper turning black and then gone.
The ashes hung there like frozen snow.

“She would not. She knows the schedule.”

My focus snapped back fully into the room.
The teal walls flickered.
Colors tried to shift again, out of habit, out of reflex.
I stopped them with a thought.

“Thalia.”

I never said her name out loud if I could help it.
I hated how it tasted, like swallowing icicles and smug.
Saying it now felt like picking a fight in an empty hallway.
No echo answered.

“She took him.”

The idea settled in slowly, then all at once.
She had wanted him worse than any of us.
She had sulked and frozen her entire block when he left on time.
She had begged for something that smelled like him so she would not feel alone.

“Of course she took him, of course she did, of course she thought she could get away with it.”

Heat rushed through my chest, hot enough to steam the air.
The lights in my cell dimmed, then came back wrong.
The pink and teal drained out of the walls.
Color collapsed into a hard, violent red, then bled into black.

“He is mine to bother.”

My reflection looked back at me from the darkened metal.
My eyes had gone sharp, no playful edges left.
Even my smile felt like a crack in stone instead of a joke.
The room stopped moving completely.

“We had a schedule.”

Every little system that made up my domain fell into dead stillness.
No floating pens, no spinning chairs, no drifting snacks.
The guards outside shifted, unsettled, sensing the shift even without magic.
Someone whispered my name in Control and it tasted like fear.

“I spent all day being good.”

I thought of every prank I had not done.
The coffee that stayed coffee.
The gravity that stayed boring.
The alarms I did not set off just to hear Kai say my name seven times in one breath.

“No chaos, you said, Loki, behave, Loki, I will be proud of you, Loki.”

Laughter tried to bubble up.
It came out thin and cracked, like broken glass dragged over tile.
I remembered the way his face had gone pink when I said the thing about the magazine.
I remembered him teasing me, then walking away, promising tomorrow.

“There is no point in being good if the audience leaves the theater.”

The promise snapped.
I felt it break like a rubber band around my wrist, hot and sharp.
It stung for exactly one second.
Then the sting turned into focus.

“Game over.”

The lockdown wards around my cell flared as they registered intent.
Red warning sigils slid across the door in neat little patterns.
Somewhere, alarms tried to arm themselves in advance, as if that would help.
I rolled my shoulders, muscles loose, mind crystal clear.

“I am not breaking out to play.”

I stepped toward the center of the room.
Reality bowed in, just a little, getting ready.
The world outside my walls shuffled its pieces, clueless and slow.
I smiled, small and sharp.

“I am breaking out to hunt.”

The last trace of teal bled out of the lights, leaving only deep shadow and hard edges.
I reached out and tapped the air where Kai’s presence used to sit on my map.
Nothing answered, but the nothing was shaped like him.
It was enough to track.

“And I am going to find the thief who stole my favorite human.”

The floor under my feet hummed once in warning.
I hummed back.
Cracks of invisible power spidered through the warding field.
They glowed like thin, eager smiles.

“When I am done, Cellblock Seven will not be the only blank spot on this map.”

I took a breath that was not necessary.
The air tasted like endings and punchlines.
One thought, and the locks began to fail, one by one.
Good behavior died in the dark, and something much older woke up.