The Shadow Thegn heard a beeping sound from the computer. He put down his coffee and hurried over. The database found a 98% match from the hologram fragment he had uploaded. Zuri Hendrix, twenty-eight years old, 5 foot 8, brown skin, light-brown hair, blue eyes; a Nova Gnosis Bacchante.
He kept scrolling through the report, taking mental notes as he went, etching her details to his memory. She was raised by the Bacchante until age 12, then she became the personal ward of Odina. The records stopped after that until she turned twenty-six and was made a Bacchante Centurion in Hyderabad Pyrἰnas. As a so-called “Priestess of Odina”, Zuri had quite the record of stopping Proximan assassination attempts against Odina the last two years.
“Fuck, I hate the Bacchantes,” he said, far too loud.
He decided he needed to bring this to the Consul immediately.
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Kai was eating lunch in his quarters, next to his cherry blossom tree, when a man burst in.
“Consul, I apologize, but I need to speak to you immediately.”
“Yes, Shadow Thegn?” said Kai, startled by the abruptness of this man.
“I discovered the identity of the woman from the assassin’s memory fragment.”
“Yes?” Kai said, excitedly.
“She is a Bacchante Centurion in Hyderabad Pyrἰnas. She is the personal bodyguard of Odina, as well as her personal ward.”
Kai was alarmed. He didn’t expect the investigation to uncover direct links to Odina herself.
“So, it is reasonable to assume then that Odina wishes the Stratego dead.”
“It would seem so, sir.”
Did Odina find out about the Replicant Project that the Meliora division was running, and Ella was spearheading? What other reason could Odina have for wanting to kill the Stratego? Was she also behind the assassinations of the four other Strategos? “Shadow Thegn,” Kai began, thinking fast but speaking slowly, methodically. “You have done exceptionally well in your assignment. I want you to do something else for me. Look into the assassinations of the four other Strategos. I want to know if those have ties to Odina also.”
“Gladly, sir.”
The Shadow Thegn departed for his mission immediately. He was not one to waste time.
Kai finished his meal and thought about what the Thegn had brought him. He looked at his beautiful tree as he ran various scenarios through his head. If Odina knew of their plans, then they would have to move up the timetable.
The Shadow Thegn was pleased. He was hoping the Consul would ask him to investigate the assassinations of the other Strategos. He thought the personnel in charge of the investigation of the most recent one had done a shit job.
He would start with that one since it was fresh in everyone’s memory.
He returned to the Annex via the bullet train and searched for everything pertaining to the assassination of Stratego William Poe. He poured himself another cup of black coffee and took a dose of the green-blue pill. He conducted mental exercises to keep himself awake and sharp until the caffeine and the pill kicked in.
Hours later, in the dead of night, still combing through files, he was startled by a faint rustling sound coming from outside Shadow Centurion’s office. No one should be in this area at this hour without him knowing. He activated his suit, which shot a black, nanotech helmet over his head and transformed the rest of his suit into all black. Then he turned off the lights and activated his night vision irises, specially made by the Meliora Division just for him. He pulled out his black-steel dagger and crept to the backside of the door.
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Then he waited.
Two minutes went by. Then five. It seemed like an eternity to the Shadow Thegn, but he lived for these kinds of moments. He loved the thrill of it. Two predators stalking each other, one not knowing they had become prey. He lived for the hunt.
The door burst open and a HULC started blasting everything in all directions. The Shadow Thegn waited for it to overheat, then he made his move. He slammed the door into the assassin and dropped low, slicing at the killer’s Achilles tendon. The figure dropped, screaming in pain, and the Thegn pressed his knife against his attacker’s throat, pinning his arms behind his back.
“Who are you and who sent you to kill me?” the Shadow Thegn said.
“You won’t make me talk, Thegn,” the assassin laughed.
“We’ll see.”
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The Meliora lab had made a counter-serum for the Oblivion Shard to ensure that future captured-assassins couldn’t escape and cause havoc the way that X did. The Shadow Thegn injected the counter-serum into the assassin as soon as he captured him.
He secured the assassin with ultra-magnetic binders below his knees and on his wrists, another precaution to ensure this assassin survived for questioning. The Shadow Thegn decided to stay at the Sergeant Centurion’s office so Odina didn’t know for a while longer that the assassination had failed; he began his interrogation immediately—and with pleasure.
“Tell me,” he began. “Why were you sent to kill me?”
The assassin said nothing.
“Oh, okay, okay. We’ll have fun then.”
The Shadow Thegn unsheathed his black dagger and in a swift motion removed the assassins left hand and half of his forearm. The assassin was in shock; he took many seconds to register what had happened and then began screaming in disbelief.
“What the fuck!” was the only coherent sentence he could stutter out loud, over, and over.
“You didn’t want to answer my question, so I removed your hand. I’ll keep removing things from your body every time you decide not to answer a question.”
The Shadow Thegn allowed a disturbing smile to creep across his face to drive the point home that he relished torturing his prisoner.
“Go fuck your face and die!” the assassin screamed. The Shadow Thegn knew that he was trying to activate his Oblivion Shard and enjoyed the look of confusion as he realized that he was stuck in this room with his torturer, and no way out.
“Well, that’s exactly the response I was hoping for. We don’t want this to be too easy!” The Shadow Thegn removed a device from the shoulder-pocket on his uniform and placed it on the assassin’s right leg, just above his knee.
“I’m going to call you Vuk, just for the hell of it. The device I just placed on your leg is one of my favorites, Vuk. I press this button”—the Shadow Thegn held up his right hand to show Vuk the remote he held— “and eight hundred and sixty-six needles shoot into your leg, above and below the device. Then they begin to send electrical pulses through your body, targeting specific pain centers. I am told it is truly excruciating!” The Shadow Thegn paused momentarily to let this sink in, then began again. “If you still won’t answer my questions at this point, then I will be lucky enough to press another button that begins to slowly rotate the device around your leg, with the needles still deep in your leg! It is a very long process, approximately 47 minutes, until your leg is completely severed. The best part is that you will never be able to stop feeling the pain in your lower leg that you felt from the needles, so you will suffer terribly until the day you kill yourself—or until I kill you!”
Vuk looked at the Shadow Thegn with shock mixed with disgust at his sadism. Vuk found his voice and said as imposingly as he could, “That is a small price to pay for the safety of my organization. Some things are more important than one man’s life. Go ahead and have your pleasure at my expense.”
The Shadow Thegn activated the device and watched with pleasure as the device began carrying out its purpose. He turned his back on the assassin and resumed investigating Stratego William Poe’s assassination while his victim stewed and screamed in his unimaginable pain. He continued studying all available holograms of the event, the investigator’s notes, eyewitness reports, and other news events of that day to provide potentially overlooked context; he began making various link-analysis charts and diagrams to make visual sense of the mess of events occurring near-simultaneously.
He found a commonality in the mess of connected nodes—someone matching the exact description of Zuri Hendrix, seen by multiple people at the world-wide broadcast that day. He had to find these people and talk to them himself, make them give him their hologram files from that day. If it was Zuri who assassinated Stratego Poe, there was no need to investigate the assassinations of the other Strategos. Once is a coincidence, twice is a pattern.
The Shadow Thegn turned back to his would-be assassin and smiled at him. “It’s been a pleasure to spend the last hour or so with you.” He kicked Vuk’s severed leg aside. “Now, if you don’t mind, and also if you do, I’ll be taking every last one of your memories and thoughts.” The Shadow Thegn removed a short, stick-like device from a pocket on his leg and thrust it up Vuk’s nose, into his brain. The device made sucking noises as it removed Vuk’s brain and turned it into code. This was the single greatest device the Meliora lab had made for him, but it only worked on fully conscious individuals, something he considered a major drawback.
The device finished its work, and the Shadow Thegn placed it back in his pocket, dragged Vuk’s body outside of the annex, and hung him by his neck with Vuk’s belt from an adjacent balcony and sliced open his stomach. That would be sure to grab Odina’s attention and force her into a position to stop playing in the shadows. The shadows belonged to him.