“Well that was almost a disaster,” Sterling noted as he sank into the jacuzzi attached to the master suite that he and his wife shared. A low, pleased groan escaped him as the jets went to work massaging his strained muscles. His eyes closed and he tilted his head back to stretch out. Thankfully, he had all the room in the world to do so. The tub was large enough for twelve people to sit in comfortably, though it only ever saw two.

The Jacuzzi’s other user, Elena, joined him a moment later. Sitting next to her husband, she gently and fondly rubbed one of his shoulders. “Better a near disaster than a certain tragedy. You made the right choice, don’t question it now.” She was well aware of what that tone of voice meant, and wanted to head it off at the pass. “These things happen sometimes. We know that.”

Opening his eyes, Sterling glanced that way. “It could have been a hell of a lot worse. If Paintball hadn’t helped Amber and Izzy get away from that crowd so they could call in the rest of the Minority, and if the rest of his team didn’t show up…” He trailed off before a heavy sigh escaped him. “The entire point was for the Conservators to arrive and drive those people off before they could actually hurt anyone.”

Elena’s head shook slightly. “To be precise, the actual point was for Miss Sidorov to believe she was in danger so she would accept the presence of our people to keep her safe. To make her believe that, the danger had to be realistic. I believe our newest Fell-Team accomplished that quite well.” There was a slight edge to her voice, despite her actual words, however. It was obvious that she, like the man himself, was thinking about the far more personal risk that had been involved with that whole situation.

“Quite well indeed,” Sterling pointedly replied with a nod of agreement. “And yet, somehow Cassidy ended up hiding ten feet away from danger again. It was bad enough at the hotel when she had to hide in the bathroom. But with this? This was our fault. Those people attacked the park because we wanted them to. If they’d killed anyone there, or if any of them had hurt Cassidy…” His face twisted a bit at the thought, hand clenching into a fist.

Taking that fist and smoothing it out gently, Elena gently kissed his fingers. “They would all pay, quite harshly. But she is not hurt, Sterling. You remember the rules that were laid out for them in the first place. None of their hostages were to be seriously harmed. Cassidy may have been in more actual danger by hiding and potentially surprising one of the men than she would have been had she simply stayed with the others throughout the ordeal. Amber and Izzy would have kept her safe.” She considered briefly before adding, “I believe that situation might have actually prompted Izzy to reveal her powers to Cassidy. So she knows she can be safe with her.”

Shaking off that thought, she focused on her husband once more. “In a perfect world, the plan would have worked flawlessly, with no adjustments or issues. But this world is very imperfect, my love. Of course I would rather you not have had to choose between following our plan as written, or interceding in the fight between Deicide’s people and Cuélebre’s at the mall. I am not saying otherwise. What I am saying is that I believe you made the best possible choice. Again, Janus, Juice, and the others had their instructions about not harming the people there. They know the penalties for violating those hard rules when we give them. But the fight at the mall was not our doing. It occurred entirely naturally, with none of our rules in place. If you had not taken the Conservators there and put an end to it, many more people would have died. Children, Sterling. Children would have died. To say nothing of the situation with Miss Rafferty at the police station. Both of those had to be brought back into some semblance of control.”

Once again, Sterling sighed. “You’re right. It was the only thing that made sense. We had to trust that Janus and the rest of that gang would follow the rules. But half of them are new to the city. We don’t know them as well as we know the rest of the gangs. I wasn’t sure how much we could trust them to follow our rules. No matter how daunting of a first impression we made on them. That’s why this whole thing was supposed to be a test. A test with safety bumpers.”

“Instead, it was a test without the bumpers,” Elena finished for him. “One we all survived. You made the right choice in going to the mall. And, while a bit… I believe scruffy would be the right word, the situation at the park did resolve itself correctly. Miss Sidorov has accepted our aid. We will take what we learn from that and use it to remove Errol’s connection to that safe so he can never be used to open it.”

“And you still think I made the right choice?” Sterling pointed out with a glance that way. “If this whole thing had gone wrong, we would’ve lost our best chance of doing that. If the Scions figure out who Errol is and manage to get to him before we can deal with that, a hell of a lot more people will die than anyone who was at that mall. Can you imagine the horrors Pencil and his sister would inflict on this entire city–hell, the entire state— if they had control of all the puppets in that safe? To say nothing of what they could do if they used that to find out about the Ministry. I saw the children at the mall in the middle of that gang war and I chose to save them. It worked out this time, but if it hadn’t, if–” He cut himself off, grimacing visibly for a moment before his voice continued a bit more softly. “It was a risk, and it could have backfired spectacularly.”

“It could have,” Elena agreed. “But it did not. And if we spent minutes reexamining every way in which moments could have gone differently, we would lose years to our doubts. You saw children in danger and chose to save them, Sterling. If you continue to berate yourself about that choice, I shall have to find a way to hurt you. Perhaps by informing Simon about that gray hair–”

“Don’t,” Sterling quickly interjected, holding up his free hand in surrender. “You win. I’ll let it go, promise.” Shifting a bit to look at her better, he offered a slight smile. “And I suppose things did work out after all. Thanks to Paintball, again. Maybe we should put that boy on the payroll, considering how much help he’s been.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered something like that,” Elena shot back, poking the man in his nose. “It’s not the first time I’ve wished we could go back and start off our relationship with the boy on the right foot. Not that I blame Simon for what happened. He did what he was supposed to do, given what he knew. And yet…” It was her turn to sigh.

With a chuckle as he took hold of her still-extended hand and squeezed it, Sterling pointed out, “Don’t forget, no spending minutes reexamining moments. You said yourself how quickly that can get out of hand. We keep moving forward as best as we can, making the choices we have to make and living with them. Now, where’s the remote for the tub?

“I want to see just how good those upgrades to the massager setting are.”

******

Several hours later, after getting a bit of sleep, Sterling was roused from his slumber by the buzzing of his personal cell phone on the desk next to their bed. He glanced toward his still-sleeping wife before quietly slipping out from under the blanket. Picking up the phone, the man rose as stealthily as possible and began to make his way to the door while glancing at the screen. There were only a few people whose calls his phone would actually vibrate for while he was asleep, so the list of who this could be was short. And sure enough, the name on the screen was Alcazar’s civilian identity. Face twisting slightly at the thought of what could have prompted this call, he carefully stepped out of the room and allowed it to close behind him. Only then did Sterling answer the phone, speaking in normal voice rather than a whisper considering the soundproofing would ensure Elena wasn’t disturbed.

“What happened?”

The answer came immediately, in a completely flat voice that told Sterling nothing about what was actually happening. “One of our friends at Channel Nine sent over an early copy of the report they’re working on that’s supposed to go out in a couple hours. I’m shooting it to your system right now. Believe me, you’ll want to see this.”

Slowing very slightly, Sterling took that in. This clearly wasn’t a worst case scenario. There were code words for that, ways to sound the alarm. Whatever was happening, the Ministry hadn’t been exposed, neither–none of his children were in mortal peril, the city wasn’t burning down. But it was important enough to call like this, and public enough that it would be on the news.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Without saying anything else for the moment, given he was certain Alcazar wanted to wait until he knew what was going on, Sterling took a few steps to the next room. It was one of his offices. He stepped inside and told the television to switch over to the private system they used for this sort of thing. Immediately, a picture of a shipwreck in front of an island came into view, along with a voice over that was clearly some sort of aid or production assistant reading off a script. This was a half-finished piece, not quite ready for actual air.

So, why was he watching the rehearsal of a news story about a boat crash? Why would Alcazar have woken him up for this? Frowning a bit, Sterling kept watching. And in a few moments, he had his answer.

“Fuck,” he murmured under his breath while staring that way. Breakwater? If the claims in this unfinished report were true, then that was where the long-missing Trivial and Flea had ended up. Which… did make a sort of sense considering how impossible it had become to track them down, but still.

Irelyn Banners. Not that she was named in the report, but he was able to read between the lines. There were only so many sufficiently important women in the city who were currently missing and whose locations he wasn’t aware of. The list was short to begin with, and the very few details the report gave would have been enough to narrow it down even if the whole Flea thing hadn’t been included. The fact that it was meant there was never any question in his mind about who they were talking about.

And yet, much of the report was utter nonsense. Flea and Trivial had not been sent to secretly rescue Irelyn. If they had been, he would have heard about it from about three or four different directions and identities. It didn’t matter how secretive the supposed mission had been, he would have known. So his first instinct was to dismiss this entire thing.

And yet, why? Why would someone make this up out of nothing? Obviously the news that an innocent person had accidentally ended up stranded on Breakwater, and that two Star-Touched had gone in to rescue her before disappearing as well, would be big news, putting it mildly. People wouldn’t just take the word of an anonymous source. The media outlet wouldn’t be getting ready to run the story, not without some confirmation of their own. The picture on the screen had just shown some boat wreckage near a random island that could have been anywhere. The only reason the news would have actually run with the story was if they had some reason to believe it was true. And that meant–

“There’s more,” he noted simply.

“Yes, sir,” Alcazar confirmed. “Whoever sent all that to about four different news stations, and posted it on a few different websites, also sent a more… detailed bit of evidence to the Conservators and the Spartans public relations boxes, and to Ten Towers as well. I took the liberty of pulling the files from all three, but they’re identical. The most important bit is that the files include the GPS location of the wreck, and it fits the location for Breakwater.”

Sterling was quiet for a moment as he absorbed that. The people behind this knew where Breakwater was, and that wasn’t a secret that was easy to get. So there must have been at least some element of truth to it.

How in the hell had something like this happened? Obviously, the news didn’t have the full story. There was no way that Flea and Trivial had actually gone to Breakwater to save Irelyn after she accidentally ended up there during a shipwreck. Among several other reasons for why that was impossible was the fact that Irelyn was Flea.

She had gone to find her missing parents. Trivial went with her, and the two of them had made it to Florida before disappearing. And now, according to this, they had somehow ended up on Breakwater. How? What was the connection?

Wait. Pittman. Pittman’s little bio-machines were running around while he was still on Breakwater. He had to have had some sort of help here in town, someone providing resources. Could that have been the Banners? Hold on… Paige. Paige had ended up with a lot of information about the Ministry. That had always been a mystery, but what if the Banners had been working with Pittman, providing him resources? Then he, in turn, provided them with information about the Ministry. Information that was in their house for Paige to stumble across, considering how much time she spent in that place. That would explain how she’d found out enough about the Ministry to start digging deeper, how she’d gained access to those files.

That answered a lot, actually.

In any case, if this was true, Irelyn and Trivial had ended up on that island together somehow. And now whoever had leaked these pictures and the story to the news was trying to get public attention on the situation, without exposing Irelyn’s identity.

But why only avoid spoiling her identity? Was it because they didn’t know who Trivial really was? No, that couldn’t be it, because there was no reason to claim that there should be three people to be rescued from the island instead of two. That just complicated matters. It would have made far more sense to simply refer to Flea and Trivial without ever mentioning Irelyn.

For a moment, Sterling was baffled. Then he realized. There had to be more than one person involved in this, and at least one of them didn’t know that Irelyn and Flea were the same person. Whoever was actually behind this was trying to thread the needle of getting help for Flea and Trivial without exposing to the world that Flea was Irelyn, and without exposing that same fact to whoever they were working with. This other person or people must have known that Flea was there and that Irelyn was there, but didn’t know they were one and the same. That sounded complicated and dangerous, so why wouldn’t they simply tell these other people the truth?

Was this Paige? It was clear by this point that the girl knew her way around computers and was good at the spying game. Better than she should’ve been. Especially if he was right about her finding out about the Ministry from her parents. If she had found out the truth about what happened to her adopted sister and had recruited someone to help to expose that fact, but didn’t want her new allies to know the whole truth… but who would she have gone to for help? Most of the groups in the city would have reached that information back to the Ministry long before it ever got this far.

There were a few options, of course. Paintball’s new group, Avant-Guard, was a possibility. But Sterling didn’t think they could pull something like this off. Not on such short notice. If Paige had gone to them for help–why would she? What could they give her when it came to getting anyone off of Breakwater? Not to sell them short, but nothing, really. If Paige had discovered the truth of where her sister was, why would she go to them for help?

Then there was the fact that, when asked about what she knew when it came to Irelyn’s disappearance only recently, she’d claimed that the only information she had was that Irelyn had left to go find their parents. Parents whom Paige herself had only left shortly before that. Their father had taken her and his wife to go hide from some mysterious enemy. A mysterious enemy that Sterling was beginning to believe was supposed to be the Ministry itself. He and Elena were the enemies the Banners were hiding from, and they didn’t even know it. Then Paige convinced him to let her come back here to go to school again, but by the time she arrived, Irelyn was already gone.

The simplest answer, of course, was that she was lying about some or all of that. But the agent who had been sent to speak with her was very good at picking up lies, and they believed she was telling the truth. It didn’t completely prove anything, but did muddy the waters a bit.

Maybe it wasn’t Paige. But his instincts told him she was involved. This whole thing was meant to force Breakwater to admit they had Flea and Trivial, and send them home. That wasn’t necessarily one hundred percent proof that Paige was part of it, but… yeah, he thought she was. In some way or another, at least.

Maybe he was thinking about this from the wrong direction. What if it wasn’t that Paige had learned what happened to Irelyn and had then gone to another group, but the other way around? What if some other group had gone to her with that information? If they knew that Irelyn was on that island and that Flea and Trivial were as well, but thought that Irelyn and Flea were different people… hmm, that was possible. They might have recruited Paige with that, but… why? And who would have found out where Flea and Trivial were, and that Irelyn was ‘there as well,’ but didn’t know two of those were the same person, and would have recruited Paige to help them? And help them what? Hold on, he was missing something here.

Wait a moment. Another thought came to Sterling, and he told the computer to shift away from the frozen half-finished news footage in order to bring up a few files and memos he wasn’t exactly supposed to have access to. Sure enough, there it was. One of the principle investors in three of Ten Towers’ member companies was Aaron Banners, Irelyn and Paige’s father. He was still something of an outsider from the group itself, preferring to build his own legacy. But he had access others didn’t. Access that could give someone very important information, such as everything they knew about the murder of that reporter, Jolene Iverson.

Grandstand. She could have accessed the information about what happened to Flea and Trivial at any of the little hideaways Pittman probably still had around here. She and Broadway were working together. But they also had help from Eits and Pack. Those four had shown up to the police station today to stop Jennica, so they were clearly in close contact. Between Grandstand’s power and Eits’, they could have discovered just about anything.

Obviously, they found out the truth and decided to pull Paige into things in order to get access to her and Irelyn's father. Which, by extension, would grant them his access to all the information Ten Towers had about the murder of Setrea’s friend. It made sense and fit this situation. Or at least as much as anything did.

“Minister?” Alcazar prompted, interpreting his intake of breath. “Do you have something?”

“Maybe,” Sterling replied. “I’m going to wake my wife and explain what’s going on. Do something for me in the meantime, would you?

“Send messages to Cuélebre and Blackjack to give us everything they know about Grandstand, Broadway, Eits, and Pack.”