Suleman laid the folder that Torch had given him on top of a filing cabinet in the bottom floor of the Servants’ center of operations, then pointed at it while looking at one of the Huntsmen who had accompanied him and Mark. “Watch it, I’ll come down for it in a few minutes.” He raised his voice for the sake of everyone in the room. “And can somebody bring a chair and some rope up to the third floor for me? Thank you!”

Mark was led up three floors before arriving at an empty, dingy room, featureless save for two windows on a single wall that looked out over the disheveled city. The two Servants that accompanied Mark dumped his knife and gun in the corner before standing to attention on either side of the room’s only door.

A few moments later, a single folding chair and a length of rope was brought up and used to restrain Mark in the middle of the room. Suleman stood in front of Mark, hands behind his back.

Mark struggled to suppress laughter. “Oh, man, you must really be a fan of this tied-to-chair thing, huh? That’s both times we’ve met now, that you’ve done it.”

Suleman narrowed his eyes. “Why and how are you here?”

Mark cleared his throat and attempted to wipe the smile off his face. “I mean, I could honestly say the same to you. It’s been a decent seven or eight months since the last time I saw you on the other side of the world, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t really expect a guy who called himself ‘high prophet’ to become a bootlicker for someone else. Eh, I guess it makes a little sense. Cult game recognizes cult game, am I right?”

“I’ll ask again: Why and how did you get here?”

Mark attempted to shrug, which was made difficult by the rope holding his arms in place. “Oh, yeah, it’s a whole thing, too long to get into. You get roped into some wild stuff with friends like mine. And how exactly did you get from Turkey to here?”

“I was brought here under the direct order of Torch,” said Suleman, “leader of the Servants of Reckoning.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of ‘em. They’ve built up quite the reputation for themself. You know anything about them, or are they just always as creepy and mysterious as they were ten minutes ago?”

Suleman sighed with frustration. “You can mock them all you want, but they are doing good things for the world, and I would recommend that you consider them more seriously than you do the people who destroyed the world.”

Mark scoffed. “If I recall, the world was destroyed by the old countries pulling a ‘mutually assured destruction’ on each other. Sure, Deus started the whole chain of dominoes, but he definitely didn’t finish it.”

“You know the Primus who did all this?”

“I know of him,” stated Mark. “If it helps, taking most of humanity and vanishing didn’t score him any gold stars from anyone I’ve met.”

“Right, yes.” Suleman folded his arms. “Well, I suppose that’s the Servants disbanded. I mean, if the only reason we think Primoi in general are dangerous is because they have regularly taken the opportunity to raid and strongarm defenseless communities for the fun of it, and have also raised entire armies to violently conquer the entire Middle East, as I know you’ve seen, then we must just be overreacting. Right?”

“…Yeah, most of them suck.”

Suleman nodded and leaned forward. “If you feel like joining the side that actually wants to help people, you can start by telling me where your friend is.”

Mark glanced out the nearest window. “Who, Horan?”

“Yes, him. I know he’s here.”

“Nope. Cross my heart, he’s nowhere near here.”

Suleman scowled. “Right, so when Torch informed me that there was a Primus in this city, that Primus is completely unrelated to the person in this city who I know is connected to one Primus in particular? Is that right?”

“I dunno what to tell you, Horan isn’t anywhere near here. You can hook me up to one of those… phonograph things. Telegraph? What are lie detectors called?”

“Then who is here?”

Mark struggled to shrug again. “Have you considered that if Torch tells you that there’s a Primus in the city, but inexplicably can’t or won’t give you any more information or tell you how they know this, they might just be messing with you?”

Suleman closed his eyes and took a deep breath before responding. “The Servants have humanity’s best interests at heart, so we won’t just kill you for fraternizing with the enemy. I am giving you plenty of chances to realize that you aren’t helping anyone with what you’re currently doing. I am going to provide this city’s Huntsmen with a description of Horan, and if we find him and it turns out you have been lying to cover for him, I might rethink that policy. Is that clear?”

“Go ahead. Nothing to hide, nothing to lose.”

“We’ll see.” Suleman turned to leave the room, but stopped when he heard Mark clear his throat behind him.

“If you don’t mind,” said Mark, “could you tell me what exactly Torch has done to earn this level of blind trust? Because I see a spooky masked stranger showing up to give mysterious orders and then immediately leaving, and all my alarm bells go off. I’ve got a nose for untrustworthy authority figures. I ratted you out back in the day, after all, and you and your last sacrificial cult proved to be such calm and reasonable people.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Suleman scowled disdainfully and opened the door.

“So, what, that’s it for the interrogation? I know whatever your job pre-whatever-you-people-call-all-this didn’t bring it up much, but trust me, these questionings don’t last for...” Mark glanced at the Huntsman at the door, the one that had restrained him. “...How long have we been up here?”

The Huntsman checked their wrist and held up four fingers, partially extending a fifth.

“Four and a bit minutes! That’s less time than it took to escort me here! C’mon, there’s no way that you only want to know where Horan is. If I saw myself in Mexico of all places, my biggest challenge would be figuring out what to ask first!”

Suleman exchanged a look with the Huntsman who had answered Mark before approaching him once more. “And what exactly made you decide to make this take longer?”

A third attempt at a shrug. “Well, when a guy like me willingly gives himself up, it means he’s looking for gains of his own. I’ve got a few of my own questions, and while you haven’t exactly been a pinata of cult secrets, it’s worth giving you a few extra shots.”

“We’re not doing that.”

“You’re not doing that consensually. I have my ways. Probably.”

Suleman sighed. “You’re working for someone, aren’t you?”

“There, see? You do have more questions.”

–

Several blocks away from where Mark was being held, Waia shuffled back into the building that she and Mark had been hiding in a few minutes earlier. She held the door open for the building's other inhabitants.

One of the Servants collapsed on the fraying sofa. “So Bug-eyes was a Primus, just like that? Glad we got him early, at least...” She looked over at Waia. “Hey, did you know about that?”

Waia sat down next to the Servant. “Nope. Hey, you got a watch?”

The Servant displayed the battered timepiece on her left wrist. “Thanks for asking, it was a gift I got for my son before he, you know...”

Another Servant leaned over the back of the couch. “Hey, either of you two seen Manuel? I don't think he came to the lineup with us.”

“I heard him in the attic a while back,” said Waia, before turning back to the Servant next to her. “Great. Cool. Can you just let me borrow that for five, ten minutes tops? I'm waiting for something, you can just put it next to me.”

The Servant removed her watch and set it on the armrest next to Waia. “Try not to break it,” she said with a small chuckle.

“M-hm.” Waia checked the time on the watch. Still another six minutes of waiting. She checked the watch again thirty seconds later. Thirty seconds had indeed passed. This was already in the running for the longest eight minutes of her life. Whatever, it would still be worth it soon.

The Servant next to Waia tapped her on the shoulder. “I, um, I got the impression that you and Bug-eyes knew each other. How did you find him? How, uh, how long did you know each other? Did you ever see him do anything suspiciou–?”

“Okay, cool it, I get it.” Waia sighed. “We’ve only known each other for a few days, we’ve never gotten very close, so don’t worry about it. If this was a big deal to me, I would’ve let you know already.”

“O...kay...” The Servant’s gaze flitted briefly to the side before immediately coming back to Waia. “But you, um, y–you didn’t tell me how you met, I heard most Primoi are out in the open with their whole, um, deal?”

Waia groaned and looked away from the Servant. “Can we not do this right now? I’m too tired t–”

She heard a click behind her and felt something cold press up against the nape of her neck. “Oh, okay, we’re doing this now.”

The hand of the Servant holding the pistol against Waia was shaking dangerously. “I–I saw him up there, in the attic... Wh–what did you do to him?”

Waia shrugged and leaned back into the sofa, which forced the Servant’s arm to follow her movement. “Eh, nothing much. Yet. He died of internal whatever, didn’t he?”

The Servant next to Waia crawled away from the couch, eyes fixed on Waia. For a brief second, she looked at the armed Servant. “Who’s in the att– Manuel? Did she do something to him?”

“She left him half-dead up there, from the looks of it,” said the Servant behind Waia, pushing the gun harder against her. “You’re still with Bug-eyes, aren’t you? You’re one of them too, aren’t you?!”

“Eh, I wouldn’t say ‘one of’, that’s giving ‘Bug-eyes’ the wrong kind of credit. He just took the fall for me so that I could be here with you all now. Isn’t that sweet of him?”

By now, the rest of the buildings inhabitants had filtered into the room, and were staring at the scene in shock. The Servant behind Waia held out his free hand. “Okay, it’s fine, nobody panic, I have this under control!”

“Nope,” mumbled Waia.

“Shut up! You might be a Primus, but I’ve got a gun! So there!”

“Okay,” said Waia. “Try to use it, if you feel like it. It’s not gonna work, I’m just gonna turn it into sludge.”

The Servant trembled. “I–I... You can’t...”

“I can do whatever I want, buddy, it’s not like you can stop me. You really should’ve just pulled that trigger without trying to threaten me if you wanted this to work. Bullet probably would’ve landed before I could tense up. Might still be able to, my reflexes can only do so much. But now you’ve lost the element of surprise, so now you need to deal with the fact that you’re touching me with a gunpowder-filled metal container. Last-minute advice: That’s a pretty bad idea.”

The gun exploded in a shower of red-hot slag, covering Waia’s hair and the Servant’s upper body in molten metal. The Servant shrieked in pain and fell backwards, desperately trying to wipe the remains of the gun off of his smoldering face and hands.

“Told you,” said Waia, grinning. She stood up and straightened her hair with one arm, which led to several flecks of slag falling on the couch and setting the upholstery on fire.

Waia looked at the rest of the cowering Servants and folded her arms. “Well, I’m sure that I could go ahead and do something similar to the rest of you, but let’s be real here, there are more fulfilling uses of my time than…”

She noticed one of the Servants holding a walkie-talkie, thumb hovering over the button in the middle. “Ah, yeah, see? You’re offering up an opportunity for me to blow my cover and get swarmed by your buddies. But, seeing as this isn’t really something I can put on hold, I’ll cut you a deal.”

She shifted into her true form, her head now almost touching the ceiling. “Let me blow my own cover for you.”