“Detective, you have no idea who Aster Lockwood actually was,” Pheonix Zamarad gritted out, arms wrapped around himself in what seemed to be a subconscious defensive movement. “You have no idea what he is. If you knew...” He trailed off, shuddering violently.

Laith studied the man curiously from where he sat on the armchair, a good three strides away from the hospital bed. The false Aster Lockwood had paled considerably, and he glared now at the hands clasped together on his lap as though angry, as though blaming himself for… something. The name – Pheonix Zamarad – tugged as Laith’s brain, as though trying to remind him of some important detail he was overlooking.

“You’re right about one thing,” Laith conceded quietly. “I have no idea what’s going on anymore. But I know I’m close to something here.” The three – or four or five, or however many people were involved in this case – of them had him running circles around the city, trying to finally catch a glimpse of a truth that had been buried so deep he didn’t know if he would ever dig it out.

“So, tell me. Tell me everything there is to know about Aster Lockwood and Cassia Grove and all of the rest of it. Because at the moment, you’re looking nice and guilty and ready to be thrown in prison for life. It’d be easy to say that you faked your kidnapping – that you killed your wife and tried to bribe some PATET Specialist to keep you from being caught. Then, you killed that Specialist before stumbling over here and making like you were attacked.” Never mind that the report had clearly indicated the wounds were most like not self-inflicted. Laith knew that this man wasn’t responsible for Cassia Grove’s death. Whatever PATET had to say about Aster Lockwood now, it had been Pheonix Zamarad’s prints that were in the database until that morning, and they hadn’t been matched to the murder weapon. But Laith also knew that it was an increasingly moot point as more time passed by. He had a sneaking suspicion that the people on Captain Fox’s shoulders wouldn’t care one bit about that minute detail. “You’re looking at a hangman’s noose if you don’t help me out here. Tell me what you know.”

For a long moment, the man in the bed said nothing, the silence clinging to them with a stubbornness that added nothing but frustration for Laith. He quashed the impatience he felt and waited, but as the minutes ticked by, Laith began to resign himself to the fact that this man had decided not to speak. He was just about to get up and leave when the man finally spoke, the words so quiet it was difficult to make them out.

“Aster Lockwood is a cold-blooded killer.”

Well, he hadn’t quite expected that. The man’s voice shook as he spoke, and Laith listened intently as Pheonix Zamarad continued.

“I’ve known Cassia all my life,” he said. “We grew up in the same neighbourhood. It’s a poor part of the city, and there’s a lot of crime. Her family’s reputation preceded them, and it was hard for me to reconcile that with the girl that I knew, because Cassia was nothing like what people said about her family. Her father and her uncle – most of her relatives beyond – were crooks. But she wasn’t like that. Even as kids, she had strong morals. Honest when it counted. She couldn’t handle seeing injustices taking place – she always had to speak up, and that put us in a few rough spots as kids.” He sighed sadly. “I shouldn’t have said that it was all her idea. It wasn’t. We came up with it together, and I – I came up with the idea to kill Lockwood. She came up with the idea to take his identity, on account of the fact that she knew someone who could help them out with it. An old friend of her father’s.”

“Grot Antrum?” Laith guessed, and Zamarad nodded.

“I grew up pretty poor, but Cassia had it really bad,” he went on. “Because her father and her relatives were in and out of prison, money disappeared as quickly as it was made, and there was never a lot to go around. So she learned to be independent from a very young age. Took on odd jobs and had her own stash. She always did have a knack for business. I’d help her out sometimes, and she’d split the money with me. She was saving up for her own house – as far away from her father as possible, she’d told me. And, as we grew older, and her stash disappeared time and again, we both realized something. Her family would never let her live the life she wanted. She still tried her best, though.

“She went to school, got good grades, took on part-time jobs, and got better at hiding the money she made. We both tried our best, because we both had something to prove. She wanted the world to know that she wasn’t the same as her father, and I wanted my father to realize that I wasn’t a mistake. We both got scholarships to the Novus Atlantis Business College. We did good. We worked together, studied together, and things were looking up, for a while. Then she got an opportunity to study in Heliopolis, and of course, she jumped on it. It was supposed to be the chance of a lifetime. But that’s where things started going bad.”

“Why is that?” Laith wondered.

“She met Aster Lockwood,” Pheonix replied grimly. “He was… He was just some guy with a lot of money who was interested in her. At first, she just liked the idea of going to nice places and fancy restaurants. She hadn’t ever had that kind of life before, so she humoured him a bit. Thought she’d have a little fun while she was in Heliopolis. But she said that Lockwood was… He’d get scary, sometimes. Not angry, but… He made her uncomfortable. Apparently, it got worse the more time she spent with him. She was happy when she left Heliopolis and came back to Novus Atlantis. She got a new job at Emerald Farm – scouted right out of university – and got her own little place. She was doing good again. And then he had to come looking for her.”

“Do you think he was stalking her?” Laith asked.

“I know he was stalking her,” Zamarad said. “And she knew it, too. But at first it was just a nuisance – a guy that just wouldn’t let go and move on. Used to nick-name him Superglue. We’d make fun of him when it was just the two of us, but I could tell that she was uncomfortable with him being around. He hadn’t gotten physical with her. He hadn’t gotten particularly angry. So, she wasn’t worried. But she was concerned.” He paused, considering his next words carefully. “One night, she came to me shaking like a leaf. She said she’d seen something terrible, and she was scared he was going to kill her. She kept saying the same thing, over and over again, like she was in shock. When she finally told me what was happening – that’s when I realized Lockwood was insane.”

He inhaled shakily, glancing at the door of the hospital room as though expecting someone to barge in. “She said he killed someone, right in front of her,” he said, his voice lowered. “Cassia told me he took her out to the Ruins – hadn’t given her much of a choice in the matter – and pulled out a big gun. A rifle-type gun. And he said he wanted to go hunting. He killed someone, right there in the Ruins, and he took photographs of them. How sick is that? He took photographs, like he’d just shot some animal out in the wild, and then he took her back to Novus Atlantis. Told her that she was the first and only woman he planned on revealing his hobby to, because she was the love of his life, or something twisted along those lines. He dropped her off at her apartment building and told her that if she told anyone else, he’d do the same to her and to whoever she told.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Did he know that she told you about this incident?” Laith asked.

“No,” Pheonix replied, fidgeting with his hands. “She said she went upstairs to her apartment and turned on the lights. And then she changed her clothes and slipped out the back exit. Then she came to me. We sat down for most of the night, thinking about what we could do. There was no evidence, and the crime had taken place outside of the city, anyway. Crimes in the Ruins go unpunished – everyone knows that. But nobody goes out there and takes advantage of that the way Lockwood did. He was crazy!”

“Tell me what you did afterwards,” Laith prodded.

“We came up with a plan,” he said quietly. “He was stuck to her like glue, so we had to do something about it. He was obviously obsessed with her, and Cassia was scared for her life. She wanted to get rid of him, but he was rich and obviously knew more about making people hurt than either of us. So, we figured the only way to make sure she would really be rid of him was if he was dead. And we realized that if he was dead, people back home in Heliopolis would ask questions,” he said, glancing guiltily at Laith. “Not family, of course, because he didn’t have any family. And not friends, because Cassia had told me he was kind of a loner even back in Heliopolis. But police would come asking questions, because his residency permit would expire, and he wouldn’t be on the flight home, and he’d be marked as missing. At the same time, if you guys knew he was dead, you’d need to investigate it.”

Laith nodded. “That would have been the procedure, yes,” he confirmed.

“Right,” Pheonix Zamarad said. “So, Cassia thought maybe we could avoid all of that and at the same time at least get something out of this whole ordeal. She knew that I was having trouble with my father – he’d always disliked me, and I was eager to prove to him that I wasn’t the failure he thought I was – so she suggested that I take Aster Lockwood’s identity and use my family ties to open a farm in Heliopolis. That’s what we’d been studying, you know, and she always said that I had really good ideas when it came to that kind of thing…” He trailed off, shrugging. “Anyway, the plan was that I'd go back to Heliopolis as Aster Lockwood, so nothing would be out of the ordinary, and then come back, marry her, and get her an spouse residence permit, which she could then use to set up a business in Heliopolis and get her citizenship. So, I met up with my father and I let him know everything - minus the fact that I'd be killing the real Aster Lockwood, of course. I presented our business proposition to him--”

“Hold on a moment,” Laith said, raising his hand. “Business proposition? Family ties? I don’t think I follow. Who exactly is your father?”

Pheonix Zamarad’s brows raised in surprise. “Oh,” he said, mildly shocked. “I thought you knew. My father – he’s Fraser Zamarad,” he said.

Fraser Zamarad… “Of Emerald Farm?” Laith asked, and Pheonix nodded. Now it was Laith’s turn to be surprised. “But you said you grew up in poverty.”

“I’m his illegitimate son,” he said. “He sent some support while I was growing up, and I got to meet him a few times, but I became very aware of the fact that he disapproved of me. Maybe he saw me as a leech, or maybe he felt threatened by my existence – a living, breathing scandal. I wanted to prove him wrong. I wanted to make something of myself, without his help.”

“And taking Aster Lockwood’s identity has given you that chance?”

“Aster Lockwood is rich. Pheonix Zamarad isn’t anywhere near the vicinity of comfortable. And Lockwood – Lockwood is important just because of his wealth. He is influential because of his wealth. So, yeah. I would say being Aster Lockwood has opened a lot of doors for me,” Pheonix muttered.

Laith was reminded of something he’d been taught in school, about how the founders of Heliopolis had wanted to work towards a state of balance in which a person’s ability to succeed and thrive had nothing to do with their wealth – and, indeed, a state in which no person in the city would be excessively wealthy. Additional wealth, they had said, would go back into the city. It would be invested into the betterment of Heliopolis and the development of the society. Unfortunately, they hadn’t quite worked out how to do that just yet, though every year it seemed they tried to take small strides towards that goal, and many others. He was not surprised that Pheonix had found himself additional power and influence in the wealth of Aster Lockwood.

“I told my father that I was going to make a name for myself, and that I was going to open up a farm that gave his a run for its money. Told him I’d do it under a different name, so nobody would know who I really was. So, he knows that I'm committing identity fraud here. He just doesn't know who Aster Lockwood really was, and how I could take his identity. And I told him that when the time came, I’d make it worth his while, too. He’d see how useful I could be, how wrong he was about me. All I wanted from him were contacts. I wanted the names of people in the agricultural industry in Heliopolis. He didn’t even have to tell them anything about me and they wouldn’t have to know that we were related – I’d introduce myself under a different name and do all of the hard work on my own. And I did, you know,” he added, a strong passion burning in his eyes. “I built Greenland Farm up into what it is today. I came through on my promise to my father, and now one of his children is dominating the agricultural industry here in Heliopolis, and it isn’t even one of his high-born legitimate sons, either.” He lifted his chin, and for the first time that day, Pheonix Zamarad looked proud and confident. “I made it all happen.”

“By taking the life of another man,” Laith said flatly.

“Aster Lockwood wasn’t just any man,” Zamarad said, now visibly deflated from his brief moment of boldness. He ran his fingers through his neatly brushed hair, and Laith noted the physical differences between the real Aster and the false Aster. For one thing, the false Aster was skinnier, his face cleanly shaven. For another, he was much easier to read. He wasn’t a very good liar, and Laith didn’t feel like the man was hiding something from him now.

“He was a killer. That man Cassia saw him kill in the Ruins was just a guy trying to survive. He probably had family. Friends. Someone. And he wasn’t the only one Lockwood had killed. He bragged to Cassia about his kill count being in the dozens and talked about how he wanted to hit one-hundred by the end of the year. He made her watch him kill two more people in his so-called hunting sprees while we tried to finalize our plans. Cassia never completely healed from that trauma. She would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming her head off – even here where we were safe and everything was well.” He pursed his lips, as though he’d just tasted something sour. “He was a monster. A manipulative devil. We were doing the world a favour. We were saving more people from being hunted and killed by him for sport, and we were saving Cassia from him, and we were giving each other a brighter future.”

He looked as though he wanted to say more, as if he were on the verge of slipping into a tirade, but thought better of it, exhaling loudly. “Trust me, Detective. Aster Lockwood isn’t someone you want walking around Heliopolis. Not with what he knows now. Not with what he’s done. What he will do.”

“What do you mean, what he knows now?”

Pheonix Zamarad’s eyes met Laith’s, and for the first time, there was a strength there, one that had grown as the man continued to remind himself of the reasons why killing Aster Lockwood had been a good thing – or, at least, a just thing – to do. “You know it, too, Detective. PATET," he stressed, his speech pressured, his hands gripping the thin hospital sheets in tight fists. He went on in a rapid, frenzied manner. "The others don't have to deal with PATET, so they don't have to stick to the Ruins, but Lockwood – Lockwood couldn't risk it. That's why he went to the Ruins so much. But now he knows. Whoever controls PATET can get away with almost anything. We made a mistake, not making sure he was dead before we left. We were amateurs, of course – not like him. But we should have made sure, just in case. We should have made sure he couldn’t ever come back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Lockwood never knew – that’s why he stuck to the Ruins,” Pheonix said. “Don’t you see?” he asked, his brow pulling together in concern. “Now he knows about PATET. Now he knows how easy it is to get away with a crime. To pin it on someone else. To delete information or manipulate it or get rid of evidence. To make it look like the crime never happened in the first place. With this kind of power, Aster Lockwood won’t be limited to the Ruins anymore. He can kill anyone, anywhere, and get away with it. And it's all our fault.”

Laith felt the creeping chill of fear wash over him as he realized the truth in Pheonix’s words. If Aster Lockwood was the killer Zamarad claimed he was – and his story was certainly more believable than Lockwood’s had been – then he was right.

“Cassia was just his first victim in the city,” Pheonix whispered, a shiver ripping down his spine. “Anyone could be next. Anyone. Even here, I’m not safe.” He looked up and met Laith’s eyes. “Even you aren’t safe, Detective.”