Phoenix.
She was there when Drakon returned to consciousness as, suddenly and painfully, someone plunged a needle into his arm.
But as the room swam into focus around him—bare, brightly lit, with only a table between him and the interrogator’s chair—he knew it couldn’t be true. Phoenix...
Phoenix was dead. They had told him so. Brita had killed her, after he’d left her helpless. They had used that against him, as if they’d known what it would do to him.
Somehow, they had known.
“Awake, are we?” the woman’s voice said from across the table.
He blinked to clear his vision. The room was too bright for his Opir eyes, but he knew it was meant to be. He had fed from Phoenix—how long ago?—so there was little danger yet that he would starve. Not yet. But he had no doubt that they’d try that measure along with many others in order to obtain his secrets.
They must also realize he was prepared to die before he told them anything.
Phoenix.
“In case you’re wondering, it’s a new drug, recently developed in our labs,” the woman said. She had graying black hair in a short, practical style, a lined but handsome face, and wore a conservative dark suit. It was clear she was high up the chain of command, and Drakon was vaguely surprised that she would have been assigned to the second round of interrogations.
“Very effective,” Drakon said, his speech still a little slurred. He lifted his head. It felt as heavy as one of the pylons in the market where he, Phoenix and some of his crew had taken temporary shelter.
Was this the biological weapon meant to wipe out the Opiri, or some variation of it? If the former, he was probably already dying, though the mechanism of the pathogen remained a mystery. Perhaps they were still testing it, knowing he’d be executed, anyway.
It would be very good if he were to die, preferably as quickly as possible.
“Have you devised a method for delivering it as a projectile?” he asked.
The woman leaned back. “I believe we’re here to question you, Drakon.”
He pulled his arms against the restraints that held his hands bound together and fixed to a chain set into the floor, too weakened by the drug to make more than a token effort. “I’ve told your interrogators everything I know,” he said.
She tapped her tablet with a square fingernail, bringing up a screen he couldn’t see. “My name is Director Chan. I will be conducting the second phase of this interrogation. If you cooperate, we can finish this matter quickly, and you’ll be remanded to a reasonably comfortable cell—”
“I’ll be executed,” Drakon said.
“—or,” Chan went on, as if he hadn’t interrupted, “if you are stubborn, I’ll be sending some of my experts to deal with you.”
“Experts whose usual methods of questioning include daylight or simulators with the same effect, starvation and of course the conventional forms of torture, which cause pain to Opiri even if we’re somewhat more durable than humans,” Drakon said.
“So you are.” Chan pursed her lips. “It sounds as if you are familiar with our procedures, Drakon.”
“Every Opir knows about human techniques.”
“Especially every Opir agent. Or assassin.” She leaned forward again, pushing her tab to one side. “Where shall we begin?”
Six hours later, near what Drakon estimated as dawn, they left Drakon alone to “think over” what he and Chan had discussed. Chan had expressed her deep disappointment in Drakon’s refusal to be reasonable, and profound regret at what would follow as a result.
After two more hours of enduring the blinding light, he began to feel the first stirrings of hunger. He could go several days without blood, but he suspected the drug they had given him was somehow affecting his metabolism, weakening him and insuring that he wouldn’t recover too quickly from any torture the interrogators might inflict.
He knew his brief respite was about to end when the lights brightened still more, taking on the heat and brilliance of a simulated sun. It was not yet hot enough to burn, but he felt his skin tighten and the first pain begin. The two men who entered the room were expressionless, professional, prepared to do whatever it took.
But so was Drakon. He smiled at them, showing his teeth.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said.
As one of the men closed the door behind him, the other approached Drakon with his right fist tightened. There was a loud clang from the corridor as another door closed.
And then it began.
* * *
“Drakon.”
The voice cut through the fog of constant pain as neatly as Opir incisors through the softest human flesh. He knew it wasn’t real; he’d been in a nearly constant state of delirium, his vision blurred by the bombardment of bright light, his nose filled with noxious odors meant to offend the keen Opiri sense of smell, his skin icy from the bitterly cold temperature. The heat and light of the sun could destroy a Nightsider, but Opir bodies functioned at a much lower temperature than humans’.
In every way, they had made the place “uncomfortable” for him...after beating him thoroughly, though only with fists. That had been unpleasant enough, though far from sufficient to make him break. Or die.
“It’s all right, Drakon. I’m here.”
He tried to shake the phantom voice out of his head, wondering how they’d managed to devise this new form of torture. Recordings? More simulations?
The woman, who might have looked something like Phoenix if Drakon had been able to see properly, entered the room carrying a tray with a pitcher of water and a glass. With one hand she closed the door behind her, and looked around as if she were assessing the small, featureless space. Suddenly, the temperature warmed, the lights dimmed and the hideous stench diminished.
The illusion approached the table, set the tray down and made a slow circuit of the room. It seemed she was looking for something; she glanced up at the cameras, examining them closely.
“They’ve been turned off,” the vision said, as if to the air. “And so have the recorders and listening devices. We’re alone.”
“Is that important?” he asked, trying without success to focus on her face. “Do they think this is going to work better than the other methods?”
She turned to him, her expression suddenly dark with rage and anguish. “I’m so sorry, Drakon.”
He leaned back as much as he could, his body afire with pain, and smiled. “I’m sure you are,” he said. “Who are you? A projection? Or did they just find someone who looked like her and dressed her up nice and pretty?”
“This is Phoenix, Drakon. I’m alive. I’m here to help.” Moving like an old woman, she took the chair on the other side of the table and poured water into the glass. “Please try to believe me.”
“I believe you,” he said, his head rolling on the back of the hard chair. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Without warning, she pulled something from the inside of her jacket pocket. She got up and moved toward him slowly. He braced himself as she knelt behind him.
There was a low, brief buzz, and Drakon felt the bonds give way. Immediately, he freed his hands, turned in his chair and reached for the woman. She remained kneeling where she was, looking up into his face. He grabbed her shoulders and slid his hands toward her neck. He still had just enough strength....
“I know they haven’t given you any blood,” she said. “You can have mine, or you can kill me. My stupidity brought you to this.”
He withdrew his hands. They were shaking so hard that he couldn’t have hurt her if he’d tried.
“Who are you?” he rasped.
Taking him gently by the arms, she kissed him. The thought came to him that only one person in the world had ever kissed him that way. It wasn’t something anyone could fake.
“Phoenix?” he said.
“Yes. It’s me. I’m alive.”
He took her face between his hands, examining every feature, every tiny imperfection that made her so beautiful.
“Alive,” he said.
This time he kissed her, and it went on for a very long time. Then he enfolded her in his arms and held her fast, his cheek resting on her hair. When he pulled back, she was smiling and weeping at the same time.
“We’re both alive,” she said. “And we’re going to stay that way.”
He rested his forehead against hers. “Will it do any good...if I tell you that the only thing that matters is that you’re alive and safe?”
“None whatsoever.”
“If you’re wrong about the monitors—” He gripped her shoulders. “Phoenix, you’ve signed your own death warrant.”
“I have reason to believe they did as I asked,” she said.
He stiffened. “What reason? Because you can convince me to tell them what they want to hear?”
She got up and moved around to the table. “Please,” she said. “Drink some water.”
Slowly he turned in the chair and took the glass. He stared into the clear liquid for a moment and then, holding Phoenix’s gaze, drank it all.
Nothing happened. He felt no different. If it was drugged, it was very slow-acting. Which it very well might be.
But Phoenix would never do that to him. Never. “I love you,” she’d said. And he’d believed it then. He wanted to believe it now.
“They said they caught my fellow agents,” he said. “Were they lying?”
“No.”
“How did they find them?”
“With the help of an ‘anonymous source,’” she said.
“Are they still alive?”
“Yes. But you can’t help them now, Drakon. Neither can I.” She reached across the table to take his hand. “I didn’t come to trick you. I came to tell you that there is hope.”
“Hope...of what?” he asked, gazing into her eyes with a strange feeling of contentment.
“Just believe me. Please, Drakon.” She poured him another glass of water. “Drink.”
“Where is Brita?” he asked, ignoring the glass.
She must have heard the fury in his voice, though he never raised it above a near-whisper. “She spoke out for me,” Phoenix said. “Gave me part of the credit from stopping you and bringing you in. I don’t know why.”
Once again Drakon glanced at the cameras and recorders set into the walls. Phoenix followed his gaze.
“If anyone’s listening,” she said, “they won’t report what they’re hearing to anyone except the person who’s arranged this meeting.”
He didn’t ask her who she meant. He knew he’d find out soon enough.
“I believed Brita,” he said, his emotions overcoming his determination not to let her see him falter. “I had no idea—”
“I know what she is,” Phoenix said evenly. “I know why she turned against you. She always regarded you as a tool to be thrown away when you weren’t useful anymore.”
“When she saw me...as too weak,” he said, perfectly understanding why she had come to that conclusion.
“She’s brilliant, Drakon,” Phoenix said. “But no one here is going to believe me if I try to tell them. She’s been with Aegis a long time. She’s highly trusted. And she captured the assassin who killed John Patterson.”
“She tried to kill you.”
“I know. But only one person realizes who she really is. And he’s the one who’s going to help us.”
Drakon clenched his fist. “The mayor.”
The mayor. One of the men responsible for the pathogen that might be killing him even now. And Phoenix said he wanted to help them.
“Don’t trust him,” Drakon said, swinging around to face her again. “Whatever he’s told you to do—”
The door opened again. Phoenix shot to her feet, falling automatically into a defensive crouch. Weak as he was, Drakon did the same.
But the young man who entered raised his hands above his head and stopped just inside the closed door. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said. “I’m the one who made sure the monitors really were turned off. It helps to be a hero who wants to give the bloodsucker who killed his father the beating of his life.”
* * *
Matthew Patterson didn’t smile. He glanced from Phoenix to Drakon and walked into the room, slowly lowering his hands.
“Drakon,” he said. “Phoenix.”
“I didn’t kill your father,” Drakon said, approaching the younger man slowly.
“I know.” The Enforcer’s brown eyes were glazed with tears, and Phoenix’s heart ached for him. She’d thought him incredibly foolish at first, this young man who had so valiantly tried to help maintain Phoenix’s cover in the Hold, and then become Drakon’s hostage to expose his father’s crimes against justice. Just as Brita had told Phoenix before she’d sent her into the trap, John Patterson’s son had done what Drakon had apparently asked of him.
And then his father had been shot right in front of him.
“I don’t know what to say,” Phoenix said, genuinely at a loss.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Matthew said. “I know neither one of you had anything to do with it.”
“How?” Phoenix asked, wondering what he had heard since Patterson’s death. What he had been told.
“Because I spent two days talking to Drakon while you were gone from the Hold,” he said. “I learned a lot about him, what he thought and believed. And he told me about you.” He almost smiled. “What a guy says about a woman gives you a good idea about who he is.”
Phoenix swallowed. What had passed between them during her absence? Had Drakon seen something of his long-lost son in the younger man, or what he might have become had he lived? Opiri aged almost imperceptibly, over centuries rather than years.
But Drakon looked to be only in his late twenties, and his own son would have been considerably younger than Matthew. Some kind of bond had grown between them—one, Phoenix thought, that she might never understand.
“I didn’t know why you’d agreed to go through with...what Drakon asked you to do after he let you go,” she said to Matthew.
“Once I read through those files, I knew my father deserved to be exposed. I admit I didn’t expect...” He blinked rapidly. “Sometimes even enemies can gain a little respect for each other. Drakon didn’t kill me. And even if he used me, he had reason.” He sighed. “You look sick,” he said, meeting Drakon’s gaze. “I know what they’ve been doing to you. I would have stopped it if I could. You’d better sit down.”
When Drakon didn’t move, Matthew looked at Phoenix. Feeling dazed for what seemed like the hundredth time since she’d woken in the hospital bed, Phoenix grabbed Drakon’s arm and steered him back to the chair. He didn’t fight her. She offered him the water again, and he drank.
“Maybe you’d better fill me in,” she said to Matthew, “and tell me why you’re here. If you want to sit...”
He remained where he was and gazed at the stained concrete under his feet. “I haven’t forgotten what Sammael—Drakon—said when you and he brought me to the Hold. That my father was the most brutal captain and commissioner the Department of Deportation had ever seen. I thought it was all just part of Drakon’s interrogation. To break me down. I was proud of my father for keeping the peace, helping to keep the city alive, but I didn’t know...”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Phoenix said quietly.
He looked up again. “I should have known. There were...signs, the way he acted, even at home. And I’ve been an Enforcer for three years. I heard talk sometimes, when people thought I couldn’t hear. And then I really saw the Fringe, what goes on there, how those people suffer. I still didn’t want to believe, because when I joined, I just wanted to make him—”
Matthew broke off, flushing, but Phoenix knew exactly what he’d been about to say. How much had he been trying to prove, when his father, for good or ill, was such a legend in the city. Was that why he’d tackled her and “Sammael” alone that night?
“Lieutenant Patterson—” she began.
“Chavez,” he said. “My mother’s name. That’s what I’m using now.” He lifted his head. “I’m sorry about what I said to you in the Hold.”
“You were trying to protect my cover.”
“They didn’t tell us that you were after spies,” he said. “Only that your real purpose was to find the Bosses.” He looked at Drakon. “You’re the real victim in all this.”
“You know that’s not true,” Drakon said, a grim set to his mouth.
Something Phoenix couldn’t interpret passed between the two men. “I understand why you thought you had to kill the mayor,” Matthew said. “You were a soldier, doing your duty. But you had another reason, too. I didn’t have any idea when I left the Hold with the files. But since I got back, I’ve had access to things I know my father didn’t want anyone else to see. I have a pretty good idea of what my father was doing besides trying to become mayor of the Enclave.”
Glancing quickly at Drakon, Phoenix took a deep breath.
“It’s okay,” Matthew said. “No one can hear us, even though someone should be shouting this from the rooftops.” He dragged his hand over his face. “You knew about this...thing, didn’t you?”
“Not until very recently,” Drakon said.
“So Erebus doesn’t know yet?”
“Not unless...” He trailed off, and Phoenix knew he wasn’t ready to tell Matthew about Brita. It could set off a whole avalanche that no one might be able to stop. “Not when I left. Do you have proof?”
“Not yet. But I’ll find it.” Matthew managed another very faint smile. “The thing about my generation...most of us don’t hold with the idea of going through another war. We don’t want to put our asses out there to be killed because we’re all too stupid to make it work. So I guess we have to find a way to stop it, if no one else will.”
“What will you do when you have the information you’re looking for?” Phoenix asked, feeling a fresh stirring of hope.
“First I plan to resign from the Force, as soon as the investigation into my father’s death is finished. Then we’ll have to figure out a way—”
“You,” Drakon said. “You’ll have to figure it out. It’s unlikely I’ll still be here.”
Phoenix turned on Drakon. “I told you—”
“We don’t lie to each other,” Matthew said. “Maybe what we do isn’t right sometimes. Maybe most of the time. But we’ve always stood together. I trusted what Drakon said before. I believe him now.”
“What do you mean we?” Phoenix asked. “Who doesn’t lie to each other?”
“Phoenix,” Drakon said, pulling her toward him. She knelt beside his chair, looking up into his pain-racked face. He touched her cheek. “I told you I was deported because I was a dissenter. I told you my wife and child died in a clash between the Enforcers and protesters.”
“But you weren’t there when it happened,” she said, the words thick in her throat.
“No. But I was never a dissident. I was an Enforcer.”