| |
“WHY THE HELL DIDN’T you tell him?”
As if Simon couldn’t tell he was angry just from his tone Tristan swept his arm across the kitchen counter, sending their empty coffee mugs crashing to the floor. Keene had left just a minute or two before. Tristan had kept it together until the second the door closed. But now that the two of them were alone, Tristan wanted answers. And he apparently wanted them now.
“Why didn’t you tell him those were the men who attacked us in Munich?”
Simon held up his hands peaceably, stepping casually to the side so that the counter in the middle of the room was a barrier between them. There had been other types of outbursts over the last few months as Tristan confronted Simon on more and more things that he couldn’t bring himself to explain. The aftermath was getting more difficult as well.
“Can you just calm down—”
“Don’t tell me to calm down, Simon!” Tristan shot back. “Now I know the signal: tap twice on the side of the paper means to keep your mouth shut. I did that, alright? I didn’t say a thing. But now you have to tell me why. Why not tell him? What are you hiding?”
Simon took a deep breath as he tried his best to come up with a rational argument.
The man in question had crept into their apartment in the dead of night. Drugged them when they were already almost blacked out from blood loss. Passed them around a room and beat them. Threatened to cut Tristan’s throat unless Simon gave him whatever information they’d collected on the brainwashing device. Long story short, he could understand Tristan’s anger. It was justified.
Then again...he could understand their side of it, too.
“Tristan, you remember what Fodder said that night? He was never actually going to hurt us.” He backtracked quickly at the look of fury that darkened Tristan’s face. “Okay, okay! He was never actually going to kill us.”
Tristan threw up his hands, pacing away in frustration. “Oh, my mistake. What a bloody saint.”
“I’m just saying, he had a good reason to do what he did.”
At this, Tristan turned around slowly. His blue eyes dilated dangerously as they pierced Simon with a critical stare. “He had good reason?”
Every instinct warned Simon to pull back, but he pushed forward.
“They wanted the device to rectify corruption within the Privy Council. They’re unsatisfied with the PC just like we are, Tris. No wonder they want him brought in and silenced so bad—”
“Are you kidding me right now?!” Tristan exclaimed. “I don’t care how sympathetic to their cause you might feel, Simon. You work for THIS side. Start acting like it. I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation...” He walked away a few steps, trying to collect his thoughts. When he came back there was not an ounce of compromise on his face. “The man held a knife to my throat. Damn straight I’m going to bring him in to be held accountable.” His eyes leveled with Simon’s as a charged silence hung in the air. “Now are you going to have my back, or what?”
A wall came up. Permanent. Unmovable. As plain as the eye could see.
Both boys chose not to look.
“Of course I am.” Simon bowed his head submissively. “Always.”
Tristan measured his expression for another second before turning abruptly on his heel and going upstairs to pack. Simon stayed behind in the kitchen, feeling rather shaken. Thank bloody goodness the PC didn’t have their place bugged. Not that it mattered.
As loud as they’d screamed at each other before, as many times as they’d actually come to blows, things had never gone this far. The pressure that had been slowly mounting for the last two years, the same pressure they both deliberately ignored, pressed suddenly heavy on Simon’s chest, making it hard to breathe.
It wasn’t until Tristan had almost reached the landing that Simon called out to him once more. “We don’t keep secrets—you and I.”
He didn’t know what made him say it. Perhaps it was some desperate grasp at normalcy. A belated attempt to salvage whatever he could—like a drowning man clutching a life preserver in the middle of a turgid sea. Whatever it was, it died in the air between them.
“Right,” Tristan laughed darkly. “We don’t keep secrets.”
Simon stayed down in the kitchen for a long time. Long enough to hear Tristan start and finish a phone call with Mary, explaining that he’d be home in just a day or two, asking that she kiss the baby. Long enough for all their unsuspecting neighbors to wake up, start their morning coffee, and stroll down their long driveways to collect the morning paper. So long that when Simon glanced up to see the clock was coming up on eleven, he jumped in shock.
Stripped of Tristan’s tatù, he made much more noise than usual as he bounded up the stairs to begin getting ready himself. After Keene’s initial debriefing, he’d called in half a dozen or so men who stood in a line in front of Simon—each offering their ink. It was a pre-mission ritual that had been established some time in their second month. While not everyone had either the courage or the skill to go out in the field themselves, they did at least have the fortitude to offer for their ability to be used by those who could.
Depending on where he and Tristan were going and what they were supposed to do, Simon had tried out a variety of different tatùs. Telekinesis, telepathy, temperature regulation, the ability to breathe underwater—which had been a particularly dark mission for Tristan, and one that both boys had agreed never to talk about.
You name it, Simon had tried it. Today, he had gone for a basic strength tatù. Something powerful enough to overcome most any obstacle that came up against them.
It was one that he’d used many times, and he enjoyed it very much. The only downside was that he no longer possessed Tristan’s enhanced agility and senses. Instead of hearing everything going on around him for five city blocks, he was now limited to the upstairs.
Coincidentally, it was also the only time that Beth was able to sneak up on him.
“Shit!” Simon clutched his chest as he fell back into the door. She was perched in the center of his bed, grimacing up at him apologetically. “You scared me.” The grimace turned into a quick grin.
“Don’t have Tris’ ink?” she quipped.
He chuckled softly as he peeled himself off the door to join her. “Nope. Super strength. Tatù of the day.”
“Oh...” Her face lit up with a passing nostalgic smile. “I remember having a lot of fun with that one.”
Simon bowed his head with a grinning blush. “Yeah, me too.” Then he looked up with a bit of a frown. “What are you doing back here so soon? I thought you had to train with Jen.”
“I do,” she said quickly. Then she held up a bra with a blush of her own. “Turns out I forgot something after all.”
He chuckled again as she got to her feet and headed towards the door. Without an impending visit from mission command, there was no longer a need to sneak out the window.
But she paused suddenly on the way out, shoulders hunching indecisively as she debated whether or not to continue. After a second of deliberation, she turned back around.
“Simon, I didn’t mean to, but... I heard what you said to Tristan.”
Simon’s spine stiffened as he watched her carefully from the bed, his face not giving anything away as he searched her eyes for any detail, any clue as to what she was thinking.
Much to his surprise, she seemed to be doing the exact same thing to him.
“Tristan’s...not wrong, you know,” she continued carefully. “We always talk about making changes, things that we’d like to see happen. But that’s within the PC. Not outside of it.”
The room fell into a heavy silence.
After waiting nervously for a reaction that never came she tried again, bowing her head slightly to catch Simon’s eye. “Right, Simon?”
He stared at her for a moment, and felt another wall come up. “Right.” His face melted into a reassuring smile, and he got to his feet to see her out. She tilted up her chin automatically as he joined her, and the two of them shared a long kiss. When they pulled away, he flashed her a teasing grin. “I just like giving Tris a hard time. It’s good for him.”
She laughed breathlessly, more relieved than she was letting on. Then, after stretching up on her toes for another quick kiss, she bounded down the stairs, off to meet Jen in the Oratory.
Simon stared after her for a moment before pressing the door firmly shut.
So many questions. So many evasions. So many walls.
At this point, he could only hope that he was on the side that was going to be the winning one. The right one, maybe? He shrugged. At this point he had no idea what the right one was.
* * *
THE PLAN KEENE AND the Privy Council had laid out to catch Fodder was contingent upon the fact that none of the targets had any idea who Tristan and Simon were. Their band of renegades, Simon recalled Fodder calling them ‘like-minded friends’, apparently had an open door policy to those taking up the cause. Therefore, Simon and Tristan were to simply walk in through the front gates. Pretend to be Guilder students upset with the status quo. Sit through a few meetings and take as many mental notes as they could. That night, they were to break into Fodder’s room and kidnap him, smuggling him back out to the PC headquarters for interrogation.
...and who knows what else.
There was just one little flaw with the plan. One that, thanks to Simon’s pointed silence, the PC could have no way of knowing.
Fodder and his people knew exactly who Tristan and Simon were. After bashing in their faces for the better part of an hour, they’d recognize them anywhere. That meant, in order to get inside undetected, a little strategy was required.
“We should go in tomorrow morning, just before dawn,” Tristan said. He was perched on the windowsill in their little bed and breakfast like a cat, chewing contemplatively on the end of a breadstick as he gazed down at the blueprints of the abbey.
It had originally been designed as a monastery for a group of Catholic monks in the time of King Henry VIII. During the religious rebellions it had been emptied out and burned, the inhabitants rounded up and imprisoned for treason. A tragic ending, yes, but Fodder and his men had put the structure to good use. According to the intel gathered by the Privy Council they had renovated and fortified each and every wall, creating a miniature fortress in the sprawling English countryside near Surrey. It had been ironically zoned by the English government as land meant to be preserved for historical significance, so very little had been allowed to change.
In a way, it was the perfect design for infiltration. Wide open courtyards, only a single guarded gate to keep away threats from the outside world. And while Simon and Tristan were sure there were other supernatural fortifications there as well, there were still too many open spots to cover all at once.
Tristan dropped noiselessly to the floor, and pointed at a spot on the wall with low visibility. “According to Keene, the guard shift change is at five. We can go in then, grab Fodder, and drive him back to Guilder before anyone is the wiser. They’re not suspecting any visitors. For all we know, they don’t even know they’re on the PC’s radar. It should be easy.”
Simon nodded, but thought back with a little shudder. ‘Easy’ was a rather strong word considering the fact that these guys had jumped them and almost beaten them to death. He had a sneaking suspicion that nothing at all about them should be considered ‘easy.’
“Yeah,” he echoed, slurping down the remains of his milkshake. “Piece of cake.”
Tristan eyed him carefully, wary of his passive lack of resistance. Usually they went several rounds before settling on a plan. It was always a spirited debate. It was almost fun. But not this time.
“You still having second thoughts?” he asked quietly. “We don’t know what the PC is going to do to him. There’s a chance he’ll never come back out of there alive.”
Simon’s head snapped up, but he kept a carefully neutral expression. Tristan was testing him. Baiting him with the worst case possibility to see how he’d react.
Well, Simon didn’t have any intention of giving away his hand.
He lifted a shoulder with an indifferent shrug, pairing it with a sigh to make it more believable. “You said it yourself, the guy has it coming. I want to change things as much as the next person, but I’m not going to go around beating up teenagers to do it. We need big changes. Those are only going to happen from the inside.”
As soon as he said it, Simon knew it had gone over well. Tristan’s face lit up with a genuine smile as he passed the rest of his crisps Simon’s way. “Damn straight.”
Simon took the crisps with a grin, gobbling them down with false enthusiasm while watching Tristan carefully out of the corner of his eye.
First Beth. Now Tristan. He’d gotten them both back on board.
At least for now...
When he was finished eating, he pushed to his feet with a yawn. “We should get some sleep,” he suggested, stretching out his arms in front of him. “I know it’s early, but we can get at least a few hours if you want to wake up at four.”
Tristan nodded quickly and the two of them said goodnight. There was one bedroom on the bottom floor, and another on the top. They silently paired off with their accustomed preferences, and set their alarms for an hour before dawn.
Little did they know they were never going to hear them.
* * *
WHEN SIMON OPENED HIS eyes, he didn’t recognize the place around him. The air was cooler than where he’d been, and the smell of freshly cut grass filled his nose. It was still dark outside, that much at least was the same, but he wasn’t in his bed back at the inn.
“What...”
His head drifted absentmindedly to his neck, rubbing at a sore spot as he pulled himself gingerly up to a sitting position. As his eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light, he found himself staring into the face of a man. The very same man whose picture he’d been looking at in an open case file.
“It’s been a too long, Simon.” Patrick Fodder smiled. “We missed you.”
Oh...shit. Not again.
Simon tried to spring from the bed, but the wave of chemicals coursing through his system stopped him. Instead, he doubled over and bowed his head to his chest. The room around him was pulsing in and out of focus and he took a deep steadying breath, trying to get his bearings.
Fodder watched all of it with an impassive gaze. “That’s the trichloromethane. We gave you a strong dose and mixed it with a muscular paralytic. Consider it a compliment.” He flashed Simon a sudden, rather friendly smile. “Never know what tatù you might be carrying.”
Simon’s bloodshot eyes flickered up with a glare. “How do you—”
“Oh, I think you’ll find we know quite a bit more about you than the first time we met. You sparked my curiosity back in Munich. I thought we were ambushing two random agents the PC had sent to raid McAllister’s lab. I didn’t know they’d sent their best and brightest.” He smiled again at the look of confusion on Simon’s face. “I read your file, Simon. Tristan’s, too.”
For the first time, Simon’s sluggish brain sparked awake and he asked the obvious question. “Where is he?” he demanded, trying and failing to push to his feet. “I swear if you’ve done anything to hurt him—”
“Relax, Simon. He’s fine. He’s back at your hotel.”
Simon blinked in disoriented confusion as Fodder perched on the edge of the bed, waiting patiently for him to catch up. Finally, as another wave of chemicals cleared his system, he glanced around the room again. This time, the details started to click together.
“I’m...” he swallowed, trying to clear the thickness in his throat, “at the abbey.”
Fodder’s lips twitched up in a hard smile. “Figures you would recognize it. After all, you’ve been studying pictures of it for the better part of the day.” Simon froze guiltily, but Fodder’s smile remained. “I’m guessing you two were going to hop the wall behind the northern parapet? Poor visibility all the way up there.”
Again, Simon said nothing. Yep. That’s exactly what they were going to do.
Fodder chuckled. “I figured I’d carry you through the front door instead. Less climbing involved. Less paperwork for the Council if you happen to get shot down.”
A belated shudder ran though Simon’s body as he flexed his feet tentatively in front of him, wondering if he was strong enough to stand. As brilliant as his super-powered tatù was, it was quickly becoming clear that Fodder had anticipated such a maneuver. In fact, judging by the fact that he knew exactly where Simon and Tristan were staying, and on exactly what night they were planning on breaking in, Simon would guess that he knew exactly what ink he happened to be carrying as well.
A light clicked on. Fodder was being fed such information from a spy within the Council.
Before he could begin to process this information, Fodder got suddenly to his feet and offered Simon a hand.
“Come on, Simon. Let’s go for a walk...”
* * *
DESPITE ALL OF HIS random adventures in the tatùed world, this was truly one of the most bizarre encounters Simon had ever had. Instead of breaking into the place, he was being given a guided tour. The man he was supposed to kidnap turned into his willing host. And the people who ran the abbey themselves...Simon couldn’t have felt more of a kinship.
They had to move at a slow pace—with Simon hardly being able to walk—but Fodder moved patiently by his side, not sparing any details as they circled around the entire abbey, stopping every few seconds for introductions as they passed the night-shift guards.
Each one greeted Simon with a casual smile, clapping him on the back as if they were old friends. At one point, he recognized one of the men who had kicked him in the face back in Munich. The guy flicked him teasingly under the jaw and winked as he returned to his post.
It was unbelievable. Surreal to the point that, with the massive dose of chemicals still racing through his system, Simon almost thought he had to be dreaming.
The only thing that Fodder didn’t talk about was why Simon was there. And why Tristan had been left behind. He avoided Simon’s mission altogether, and talked about his own mission statement instead.
“Everything you see here, we rebuilt ourselves,” he said proudly, gesturing around to the high stone walls protecting their sleeping inhabitants. “We needed a place that was defensible should the Privy Council ever come knocking. When the government tasked a group with maintaining it as a place of historical significance, we answered the call. Been living here ever since.”
Simon gazed around with wide eyes, limping eagerly at Fodder’s side. The shock was beginning to fade, and he couldn’t have been happier with the sudden turn of events. Over the last few months he had been thinking about how there was too much corruption inside the Council to try to merely cut it out, piece by piece. It was a discussion he and Cromfield had together many times. They needed a complete overhaul. A brand new system to replace the old. A group of willing followers to take up the call.
Something very much like what he was looking at now.
“So what do you want with me?” he finally asked as their circle brought them back to where they’d started. “Why did you bring me here? Show me all this?”
Fodder stuck his hands in his pockets. “Well, to start, when I discovered you were planning on kidnapping me this very night, so I figured I’d better kidnap you first.”
They shared a look, and Simon couldn’t help but laugh quietly. It was an absurd juxtaposition—the two of them talking about it so casually on the abbey’s very grounds.
“But there was something else as well...” Fodder gazed at him speculatively in the dark, the clouds floating across the moon casting deep shadows down his grizzled face. “I told you in Munich that you had a choice to make, Simon. You could continue on with the Privy Council, sent out on missions with no ethical oversight to perpetuate a system so steeped in corruption the only way it sustains itself is by tearing young families apart. Or...” He let the invitation hang in the air, well aware that Simon was holding his breath.
When the silence got to be too much, Simon could no longer hold in the question. “Or?”
Fodder smiled. “Or you can always come in through the front door, Simon. It’s always open.”
Simon was quiet for a long time, staring down at his feet.
On the one hand, he wanted to jump at it. The ‘knights’, as he had so aptly named them on their last encounter, had all the right ideas and a place to begin their work. All they lacked was leadership. This round table idea of theirs was great in theory, but in practice they would need someone to step up and take control. Simon was more than willing to be that person. He was sure that not all prospective recruits received such a personal courtship. That ink on his arm set him above and beyond, and he had been brought there that night for a reason. He could take the reins, if they were so offered. With Fodder by his side, they could do great things.
On the other hand... Beth was waiting for him back in London. Tristan was still sleeping back at the hotel. Jacob was still locked in an underground dungeon, waiting for rescue. The brainwashing serum was almost complete.
There were things he had to do. People he couldn’t bring himself to leave behind.
“I don’t expect an answer tonight,” Fodder said quietly, reading his mind. “Just think about it. But think fast, Simon. Things are happening at a pace that none of us can control. The inked world is starting to take sides. You need to make sure you’re on the right one.”
Simon stared at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. Yes, he did indeed. Then his eyes dropped to his shoes as the more immediate question of the present came rushing back to him.
“What about my mission?” he asked softly.
Fodder threw back his head and laughed, drawing a cautious smile from Simon. “If you’re asking for permission to kidnap me, you might want to save your breath. I don’t care how nicely you phrase it, Simon. It’s not going to happen.”
“Right,” Simon chuckled. “No, I know that. It’s just—”
“You were sent to kill me, right?” Fodder asked bluntly.
Simon paused, deliberately slowing the conversation so he could look at it from every side. “I was sent to bring you in...”
Same thing. They both knew it. One way just took longer.
Fodder nodded. “Well, that’s obviously not going to happen. You’ll have to kill me after all.”
Simon’s head snapped up in alarm. “What?! What are you—”
Before he could stop him, Fodder reached over and took the syringe out of Simon’s vest. A PC ordered vial. The one given to them before every assignment. The one that agents took as a last resort to fake their own death.
As Simon looked on in amazement, Fodder took off the top and stabbed himself in the arm.
“Wait!” Simon ripped the vial out, but the damage was already done. “What are you doing?”
Fodder smiled again as his eyelids began to droop. “Two birds with one stone, Simon. If the PC thinks I’m dead, they’ll stop sending people to kill me. And you won’t be under suspicion for letting me go.”
He slumped over and Simon caught him quickly in his arms, lowering him down to the ground. “But what am I supposed to do?” he cried in panic. “How do I—”
“You’re a smart kid, Simon.” Fodder’s eyes fluttered shut. “You’ll think of something...”
