Entropy Residential Building. Paris, France.

Wyatt flexed his fingers as he stood outside Gideon’s door, grateful the hallway was deserted so there was no one to see how long he’d been standing there.

Between the Kyiv office and issues popping up overseas, Adler wasn’t home as much as he normally was, leaving Wyatt in more of a leadership position than he felt comfortable with. He did his best to manage, but slowly he began to notice that people stopped bringing him problems, shifting them to other people like Conner, who ran their finances, or Henri, who was in charge of the local warehouses. Most of him was relieved that the burden was being lifted without trying, but there was also a sinking understanding that it meant it was clear to everyone that Wyatt was an empty shirt, too incompetent to handle what he’d been given authority to handle. His father wasn’t going to be pleased with him, but what the hell else was new?

It left him idle most days and he spent his time in the Entropy Games office proper, where he could check in on game development and production. He couldn’t do much there either, honestly, but at least the people in the offices had little to no contact with the rest of the Entropy business and didn’t view him with the same kind of disdain.

All of that also meant that when something big was brought to him, they’d really run out of options.

With a deep breath, he knocked on the door and let himself into Gideon’s flat. Gideon, like most Elders, had lost any concern about privacy or modesty, so having to let someone into the apartment was an unnecessarily hassle in his eyes. If Gideon didn’t want him there, he’d have no qualms kicking him out and feel nothing about it.

His flat was on the opposite side of the building from Wyatt, on the top floor. Most of the Elders were housed in the basement for convenience and because they didn’t seem to mind, but Gideon cared. Or something akin to "care." He understood there were trappings of leadership that mattered.

The flat was dark and smelled like bleach from the frequent visits of their cleaning staff. All the tall windows had been painted over years ago, keeping the place dim no matter what time of day. You’d think, given the Elders’ low affect and lack of interest in most things human, that his home would be barren. It was anything but. Gideon had lived in that building for something like a hundred years and had slowly filled his flat with oddities that caught his eye. There was a painfully inaccurate globe by the coat rack and an oil painting of a woman in flowing skirts that Wyatt assumed would be worth a fortune if it were ever appraised. There was one mounted wide-nosed machete hanging on the wall, a souvenir Gideon had kept after a run-in with the Church, his dad had told him once.

And there were games, because Entropy had chosen their front based on what pleased him. He preferred the simple classic games without flashy graphics or flimsy cardboard tokens. There was a large, heavy Go board with smoothed black and white stones that looked like river rocks, and intricately carved chess pieces lined up on a sideboard. He didn’t often play with anyone, just against himself or occasionally Adler.

He’d had the kitchen gutted and ripped out years back, replaced with a luxuriant home office.

“What is it?” Gideon’s low voice surprised him, though he couldn’t say why. He walked out of the bedroom into the living room and stood to face Wyatt. He was imposingly tall with a long face, prominent chin, and a permanent five-o’clock shadow. His hair was a commonplace dark brown, cut short and parted on the side. His hazel eyes were hard to look at. They were the only part of him that looked hundreds of years old, where the rest of him appeared to be in his late forties. Gideon had a divot on his upper lip, deep enough that it changed the way his facial hair laid on his face and Wyatt tended to focus on that when they spoke, instead of his eyes. It was easier.

Wyatt cleared his throat. “I’m being asked something I don’t have an answer for.” The utter stillness with which Gideon could stand and stare you down made Wyatt even more self-conscious of the way he shifted his body when he was nervous.

“What is it?” he repeated with the same delivery.

“Well, one of the families is contacting our people in New York, saying we’re late putting in our regular order from them. They’ve been really pushy about when it will be submitted. I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“There aren’t going to be any more orders with the families.”

Wyatt frowned. Entropy had always done a decent amount of business with a handful of crime families to source weapons and pull in extra boots on the ground when they needed it. “So our guy’s just supposed to tell him, ‘No.’”

“You should tell him, ‘No.’ You’re a harder messenger to kill and it might save us the trouble of having to replace our lead agent in New York.”

Wyatt gave something between a choke and a laugh. It hadn’t slipped his notice that Gideon had said ‘harder’—not ‘impossible.’

“You want me to—wait, are we ending our relationship with the families?”

“Yes.” His expression never seemed to shift.

“Since when?”

“Does a date change anything?”

“No,” he admitted. “But they’re going to want to know why and I don’t want to accidentally get us into a war when I don’t have a good reason.”

“We don’t need a good reason. I’ll have Adler do it. He should be home by now.”

“Wait, what?” Wyatt huffed. Everyone knew everything before he did.

Gideon turned and picked up a stray newspaper on the coffee table, a signal he was done with the conversation. “Make sure I’m all set for tonight,” he said without looking up.

“Of course.”

Wyatt let himself out. Tomorrow night would be Gideon’s third night, so by dawn, he’d be moved to a secure location. The security was for everyone else. It was Henri’s job to keep the schedule and ensure they had space for everyone on any given night, so it should be all set, but Wyatt would head over and check in with him anyway.

Wyatt headed back to his flat to grab his wallet, but slowed when he heard a young woman’s voice he didn’t recognize drifting down the hall.

“This is really nice.”

“It ought to be,” his father said.

Wyatt rounded the corner to see Adler and a girl he didn’t know standing by the open door of his mother’s flat, each with a suitcase in hand. She was pretty, but young. Too young.

“Hey,” he called, picking up the pace. “I didn’t realize you were coming in today.”

“My schedule is where I am at that minute. Keep up,” he mused.

Wyatt’s eyes fluttered as he felt Adler sweep through his head. “Can I talk to you alone for a second?”

“Right back,” he told the girl and headed across the hall to his place.

Wyatt shut the door behind him and pointed to the door. “Really?”

“Do you really think I don’t know this entire boring conversation already? She’s not using it.”

That wasn’t the point and he knew his dad absolutely knew that. “It’s still Mom’s flat.”

“This might not be permanent. We’ll have to see.”

Adler took a step toward him and the door, but Wyatt held his ground. “So are you fucking her?”

His father’s face twisted. “Don’t be disgusting.”

It was a relief, but created more questions than it answered. Wyatt knew his dad screwed who he pleased and giving nice quarters to his new favorite was something that at least made sense, even if she was Wyatt’s age.

Pushing past him, Adler called out to the girl. “I have to run for a bit because apparently we’ve got problems in New York.” He stood impatiently for Wyatt to get out into the hall so he could shut his door. “Show her around while I clean up your mess.” He smiled as sarcastically as he could. “Thanks.”

His father strode off for the stairs, leaving him and the girl standing awkwardly in the hall. He avoided looking at her for the moment, opting to watch Adler disappear down the stairwell.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“You don’t have to give me the grand tour,” she said. The tone wasn’t soft, but it sounded like it was coming from kindness.

Wyatt shook his head and looked at her. “No, it’ll be worse for me later if I don’t.”

She just barely raised one eyebrow at that and he realized it might not have been the most polite thing to say.

“I’m Anise,” she replied bluntly. “Lead on.”

“Wyatt.” He felt put off balance, as though it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he might forget where things were. “I’m two doors that way. What’s up with you and my dad?”

Her eyebrows shot up dramatically. “Dad?”

He looked at her askance. “Yeah.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize he had kids.” She spoke slower toward the end and it sounded as though she had the realization that it wasn’t the most polite thing to say, either.

Didn’t realize? He decided to just push past that. “It’s fine.” He supposed it could be better than Adler having regaled her with stories of all his fuck-ups.

She composed her face again. “Anyway, he started training me about a year ago.”

“A year?” That was a long time to not hear that he had kids. She didn’t seem as oblivious as that.

“Well, I didn’t know who he was until a couple weeks ago. I’m out of the Kyiv program.”

“Oh, you’re a del Sol.”

“We aren’t all named that, but yeah. He’s been mentoring me.” She sounded defensive.

He felt defensive, too. Great. How awesome of his dad to dump them on each other.

“Mentoring you in what?” His dad was qualified in a lot of stuff but nothing you particularly wanted to be taught. Murder, sadism, having people terrified of you in place of real friends, being a cold bastard and a shit father. The list could go on.

“Telepathy.”

Fuck. Just what he needed.

“So, what’s your knack?” she asked.

“We don’t call them—I’m a power negator.”

She blinked. “I didn't think those existed.”

“Sol lies.”

He may have sounded a little too smug, because she changed the subject. “Tour?”

“Right.” He got himself together. “This level is mostly empty. Stick to this hallway. Gideon’s on the other side of the top floor and you don’t want to run into him.”

“He’s in charge?”

“Yeah. This way.” He led her down the stairs.

“Other than the Phagi being, well, creepy, is there a reason you don’t want to run into him?”

Wyatt shrugged. “Elders,” he corrected. “And you can’t predict when you might suddenly make the transition to being food, in his eyes.”

“Is that a big problem around here?”

“Depends on who you are. If my dad makes it known he likes you, you should be pretty safe, but Gideon does what he wants.”

“So who lives here?”

“Generally, anyone who’s not manual labor. The people who would have their own places anywhere else in the world. A lot of the higher ranked people have flats around the city, anyway.”

They passed a group of men going up who leered at her with an intensity that made him sick. If she noticed, she didn’t give any sign.

“She’s my dad’s student,” he snapped in French. They gave him a dirty look and kept going.

“Thanks, but you didn’t have to do that,” she said when they were gone. “I can get the next one.”

They hit the ground floor. “This is more housing. Elders are mostly in the basement, so we won’t go there. There’s a big kitchen where you can sometimes find a meal, but it’s not great.”

“Okay. Are there offices somewhere?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a building downtown that’s all games offices.” He watched her watch the people around them. She had a look about her like she thought she was invincible. That was the sort of thing that got people killed. “I’ve actually got to head over to another building on an errand for Gideon. I can show you if you want.”

“Sure.”

He hailed a cab out on the sidewalk.

“So what’s the building?”

“One of our warehouses.”

“Exciting.” It was both sarcastic and lighthearted.

“It’s not what you think it is,” he told her, probably sounding too serious for the conversation.

“Oh? What do I think it is?” she asked, looking amused.

“Storage full of boxes.”

“And what is it?”

“People.”

The cab pulled up and they got in. He didn't want to say anything more in front of the driver, but he realized she must have thought he’d meant that there were people there instead of storage, but that wasn’t what he was saying. He’d meant it was storage full of people instead of boxes. Wyatt wasn’t sure what his dad would do about him bringing her, but she’d have to know at some point, and part of him wanted to make sure she knew who his dad was. He didn’t like the idea of scaring her, but around here, scared meant alert.

The cab dropped them in front of the self-storage building. The early evening night sky was muted with light pollution.

“Weird looking warehouse,” she commented.

“Some people call it the Spa.”

She cocked her head. “Even weirder looking spa.”

“Come on.”

The guard at the front desk waved them through.

“Any idea where Henri is?” Wyatt asked.

“Should be in containment two.”

Wyatt thanked him and they started toward the elevators.

Anise was beginning to look uncomfortable. “What is this place?”

“I thought you would have brained it out of someone by now.”

“I’m about to if you don't tell me.”

“It’s where the lower ranks live, and a place where Elders can stay on their third night.”

She nodded, thinking, as he pressed the down button. “Adler said their Venus research in Kyiv is to figure out something less messy than how it’s done now.”

“Messy is one way to put it.”

An older man wheeling a flatbed cart full of cleaning supplies came down the hall toward them and made some comment to Anise in what sounded like Italian. The lewd hand gesture he made with it was universally clear. Wyatt drew a breath to say something, but Anise touched his arm. Her face was entirely serene as she looked at the guy, which only seemed to encourage him. He stalked closer, right up until he doubled over sharply with a wheeze of pain and grabbed at himself as though he’d been kicked squarely in the balls.

The elevator dinged.

Anise got in. “Did you know that pain is entirely contained in the mind? If your brain tells you you’ve been injured, then you have, whether or not it’s actually true.”

Wyatt flinched and felt his stomach sour. “Of course I know that,” he shot back, voice huskier than he wanted it to be. “Adler’s my dad, remember?”

They rode the elevator to sub-basement one, and he found himself feeling slightly less guilty about where they were about to be.

“Your knack?” she asked just above a whisper.

“It doesn’t work on telepaths.”

She gave him a confused look, but the floor lurched as the elevator came to a stop. He could admit it didn’t make logical sense that his negation didn’t work against telepathy, but he also understood that his father had been in his head since he was a baby. And like she’d said, if the mind believes in a limit, the body can’t push past it. No matter how he tried to think about it, it never took long—barely moments—for his mind to slip away from the subject, like smoke in a breeze.

When the doors opened, it was the familiar stench that hit first. It was a latrine smell with a copper tang. He saw it hit her nostrils by the tension in her face, though she took it better than some did their first time.

“Is that normal?” she muttered.

He nodded. Wyatt stepped off the elevator and headed down the hallway. It looked much the same as every other hall in the place, with uniform metal rolling doors, but it was louder here. A couple of workers stood, leaning up against the wall, chatting and looking at them warily. Their clothes were ratty and stained. Somewhere behind them, there was a low moaning that sounded more exhausted than anything, and ahead of them was a rhythmic clang of a hand (or head) banging on the other side of one of the doors, shivering with every impact. The concrete floors had old, faded, rust-red stains in places that were impossible to completely scrub away, usually spilling out underneath doorways.

They turned the corner and the hallway no longer looked like all the others. There were just two doors on either side, each one highly reflective solid chrome steel, as tall as the ceiling, with a vault-style spoked wheel lock. One of them was open.

“What the hell?” she asked, stopping.

“Blast doors. They’re designed for nuclear bomb shelters, but they’ll work to keep the Elders in. All the walls here are concrete over half a meter thick. Four rooms here, four on the opposite side.”

“That seems expensive.”

He laughed, surprised that that’s where her mind went. “Well, most places they just stack cinder blocks around them, but home base can be a little more permanent.”

Wyatt peered inside containment two. It was a small room, smaller than the other storage units—a necessity to make room for the thicker walls. Henri was there, running his hand over the walls, searching for structural damage. The floor looked damp and smelled of bleach.

“What do you need?” Henri asked in French and did a double take at Anise. “And who’s this?” He gave Wyatt a mischievous look.

Wyatt looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “English?”

“Not on my account,” she argued with impressive pronunciation. Not quite native, but still.

Wyatt switched back to French. “This is Anise. My dad’s mentoring her.”

Henri whistled. “So let’s not piss you off, huh?”

“I can’t recommend it,” she smiled.

“You all set for Gideon tonight?” Wyatt asked.

Henri slapped the wall. “Yup.” The squeak of wheels rolled up behind them. “And, there, just in time.”

One of their workers rolled a flatbed cart up to the door. On it was an unconscious man in his forties in soiled clothes, with one arm that ended in a bandaged stump above the elbow. Wyatt frowned at him and then Henri. Gideon wouldn’t be happy about the arm.

Henri put up his hands. “I know, don’t start with me. But Gideon’s own directives said to cap the number of pulls. We’ve been busy. I don’t have anyone whole.”

“What happened to his arm?” Anise asked.

“Someone else ate it.” Wyatt delivered it matter-of-fact. It was. “It normally only takes one limb to keep an Elder sated enough to keep from spending the whole night tearing out chunks of concrete from the walls. Out on the streets for their third night, they’d kill a dozen people but not eat that much.”

“So, ‘cap the number of pulls,’ means—”

“We’re trying to lie a little lower to decrease the number of vagrants and tourists getting snatched,” Henri explained. “So this is what I have for him tonight.”

It was a bad place to be stuck, to have been given orders that were going to directly piss off the man who gave them to you. Wyatt felt for him. “Just make sure there’s no one working the floor tonight that you like, because he’s just as likely to grab one of them on his way in if he’s unhappy with this meal.”

Henri nodded and helped the woman who’d brought the cart to carry the man in.

“Is he dead?” Anise asked flatly. Honestly, he’d been hoping for a slightly more dramatic reaction from her.

“Drugged.”

“Does that affect the Phagi?”

“No,” came Adler’s voice from behind them, causing a spike of pain in Wyatt’s chest. “There’s no amount of poison you could eat that would bother our Elders.”

Anise didn’t seem fazed to see him there, but the worker woman had pressed her back to the damp walls and even Henri was doing his best not to stand out.

“You found us quickly,” she said. There was a lightness to her voice, but even Wyatt could tell she was covering for a measure of unease.

“I always know where you and Wyatt are. Can’t say I expected this place to be included on your tour.” He fixed Wyatt with a gaze that made his fingers go cold and numb.

“Gideon asked me to check in for tonight. It seemed efficient.”

Adler didn’t smile. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you were thinking. I trust you’ve found she can take care of herself.”

“I was curious,” Anise said in his defense, but his father didn’t turn his head.

“You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.”

Wyatt swallowed. His good moods were never all that good for anyone else. “What’s happened?”

“Interesting news out of Italy.”

***