‘What are we going to do?’

Poison paced the room, agitated.

‘Ten has gone silent and we have no way to contact him. There’s total radio silence from the police reports. The search on Michael has been called off, so either they have him, or he’s dead. And Ten conveniently went silent at the same time. Maybe Max Rivers is cooperating with the cops? Unlikely. Something else. Sarah Pike didn’t help us at all, except hinting that the Agency might be involved, a lot. We still have no trace or clue about any new labs, we still haven’t cracked the files we stole from the last one, and-’

‘Will you stop rambling for just a minute,’ Lilly groaned.

Poison scowled, not letting up in her pacing. ‘You’re not listening, anyway. You’re texting Eliah.’

He blushed. ‘So? I still don’t need a running commentary on how shitty our situation is.’

‘You don’t seem to get the situation We should be on our way out of here, fast as possible.’

‘Tell me, are we leaving your girlfriend here or taking her with us, then?’

Poison growled.

‘Enough, you two.’ Orion lifted his head from the couch. He had a fresh bullet graze from the fight at the club, in addition to his just-healed side. This one had hit the back of his shoulder, damaging muscle and clipping the shoulder blade. It was the left side, too, hindering the movement of Orion’s dominant arm. Bugger.

Poison had immediately ordered him to rest last night, and now he was lying on the couch on his stomach, alternately shooting quips in to the room and dozing. Recovery was boring. He could try and practice writing with his right hand, for cases like these, but he was too lazy for that right now.

‘We should leave,’ Poison stressed.

‘Funny. Two months ago, you wanted to stay, and Lilly wanted to leave. Roles reversed, huh?’

Poison glared at him. ‘Great. Go on, joke and mock and don’t take anything seriously.’

She was trembling, Orion noticed, faintly, just a little, but she was trembling. She had her arms folded, hugging herself in a gesture that was far too vulnerable for her usual snarky self. Her eyes darted around, never staying fixed on any one spot.

Poison was scared. Genuinely, truly scared of what would happen. And genuinely hurt at his nonchalance. Jordan’s appearance had rattled her, and his sudden disappearance had thrown her off balance completely.

‘What’s changed in the last months?’, he asked, a little more seriously.

‘Aside from being hunted, people dying, almost being found out, and Max Rivers dragging us into a gang war?’

‘She’s not wrong,’ Lilly chimed in.

‘Just – trust me, okay?’

‘I trust you,’ Poison said, voice turning bitter. ‘I’m just not so eager to let you play with my life.’

Orion’s anger rose, quick and harsh, almost dragging him under. How dare she? He was doing his best to get them all through this alive, and she questioned him. He was about to stand up and-

The sharp twinge in his shoulder brought him back. Damn. He was slipping again, rapidly and suddenly. Poison was right to be worried, of course. The decisions he made were going to determine their survival. They had to work together.

Bile rose in his throat at how easily the anger had come. This had to stop.

Orion sat up gingerly, head down. He had to keep himself together. He couldn’t go exploding at the others, but neither could he let the guilt bring him down. He needed to make calls, and he needed to lead. There was enough time to feel horrible when this was over. Right now, he had to navigate between dangerous decisions, and hope he made the right call.

‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t hold it against you if you want to leave. I will keep going. Feel free to join, or sit this out. Either way, what’s left of us afterwards will continue to be Hounds. Get Anna out of the city, hide for a few weeks, and come back then. We’ll meet up if I make it out okay.’

He turned to Lilly. ‘Same goes for you and Eliah.’

Lilly gave him a tired smile. ‘A lot has changed. Including how I feel about you, and how Eliah feels about all of this. I won’t go. Neither will she. I tried dragging her out of the city, but she won’t budge. And I won’t let the stuff between you and me cost me my chance of getting Michael back. I’m in.’

Orion felt a mixture of sorrow and gratitude swirl in his chest. Everything was spiralling out of control so quickly. He didn’t even know Michael, had never met him, but his sights had been on finding him for so long that it had become a goal. He had been willing to take risks to achieve it, and now those risks had gotten him into a spot where he could only move forward, whether he cared about Michael or not.

At least, he’d make sure Lilly got out of this mess all right.

Poison stood, still hugging herself, unsure. Orion couldn’t fault her for it. Poison had always been one to pull out if things got heated. She’d been a skittish little thing when Orion had found her, and it had taken a while to get her story.

Poison’s father had raised her on his own, and done so negligently, bordering on or delving into abuse. After running away, she’d spent a few years moving from city to city, pick-pocketing, fighting off other urchins, competing for food and shelter.

Over time, she had advanced her style, worked out kinks, making use of her acrobatic talent and streets-won skills. She’d gotten more effective in her mode of operations, if not professional. When Lilly and Orion had found her, she’d been quiet and malnourished. A cushion of funds, regular meals, and a steady place to stay had done wonders for her. She had friends to trust, focused training, and coordinated jobs, but she was still ready to drop things and run when the situation got heated.

Orion could relate, at least a bit. Before Hounds, Poison had never had anyone to watch her back. She’d always been on her own. Staying too long meant getting hurt.

But she had also never had anyone after her, personally and specifically. The usual cut and run wasn’t going to work. Orion was willing to let her go and help her disappear, risky as it may be. She deserved the choice.

‘I don’t know,’ Poison finally answered, quietly. ‘I don’t think I can risk my life this easily. You know I love you guys, but...’

‘But this was never your fight to begin with.’ Lilly smiled. ‘It’s okay. I wouldn’t have expected you to do this. As Orion said, we’ll meet up after.’

‘Let me finish. I don’t think I can risk my life this easily, but I know I can’t leave you alone with this mess. I have to think about it. We’re looking for leads anyway, yeah? Let’s see how it works out. But we should really do something about our current situation.’

Orion offered her a hand, and she squeezed it gratefully.

‘Agreed. Let’s start with the apartment. With Jordan gone and enemy factions attacking, we might slip away from Rivers.’

‘Or we might light up on his radar. Have you heard anything from Jordan yet? Anything at all?’

Orion shook his head. ‘Not a peep. Could be dead, could be on other business, could be planning to kill us all. No idea.’

‘Comforting. So… move?’

Lilly shook his head. ‘I vote to stay. Right now, nobody’s targeting us directly. We should be relatively safe until we figure out our next moves. And we need to concentrate on current events.’

Someone knocked.

They glanced at each other.

‘Um. Any of you guys order pizza?’

The knock came again.

Orion sighed. ‘I’ll check. If I get shot in the face, do try to clean up afterwards. Bloodstains on the wall would cost us the deposit.’

Poison snorted, reaching for a knife. They snuck down the corridor, careful not to make too much noise. Orion glanced through the spyhole, then cursed and pulled open the door.

Jordan nearly fell, Orion catching him just in time. His face was bruised, one of his arms hung limp, and he was breathing heavily.

‘Shit,’ Orion cursed and dragged the hit-man into the apartment and onto the couch, wincing as his shoulder burned with the strain. ‘What in the hells happened?’

Jordan smirked. ‘Got shot, got arrested, escaped the hospital, got into a fight, came here. Brought news, too.’ He grimaced. ‘Got some painkillers? Or vodka?’

Lilly fetched a bottle of pills from the bathroom, tossing them over. Jordan swallowed a few, then grinned.

‘I met our friend Dan Shio. It’s Nine.’

Orion blinked, then groaned. Of course. Nine. That made no sense at all. ‘Wasn’t Nine killed fifteen years ago, just before your graduation?’

‘Four years before my graduation. And nah. He bailed.’

‘Who are you talking about?’, Lilly interjected.

‘A guy in the same program I was in. Long, long ago. And now he’s working for the police.’

‘Imagine that,’ Jordan chuckled. ‘What a change of careers. But yeah. Dan Shio was his last alias, and he changed it to Daniel. Should’ve been obvious, but I guess that’s the genius in it. Or the stupidity and sheer dumb luck. I forget which is which.’

He hissed and shifted a little. ‘Oh, and I know where Michael Runner was.’

Orion’s eyes widened. He blinked a few times, half afraid Jordan would vanish in front of his eyes, or break out laughing. Instead, the hit-man chuckled. He pointed at each of them in turn.

‘Scowl, bug eyes, smirk. I like the collection. Now, seriously. I was at the hospital, and they talked about him being brought in. Some discussion about sedatives and other shit. And guess what, they’re using a compound not unlike a certain substance Max manufactures. I’ve watched over the production. At that warehouse you broke into.’

Poison flinched slightly, but Jordan waved away her concern. ‘Don’t worry, no hard feelings. That’s how I found you, actually.’

He shifted again, sighing as he found a comfortable position. ‘Max used to experiment with those drugs, and I heard the name “Stone” dropped a few times. When that guy from the Stove went missing, I kept watch for anyone connected to that, and found you. I wonder what you would want with Stone and the drugs. I didn’t take you for a scientist, Orion.’ A crude grin accompanied the words.

Orion scowled. ‘Dumb coincident. We weren’t looking for the drugs.’

‘So, about Michael?’, Lilly pressed, getting the conversation back on track.

‘Oh, yeah. I overheard where they took him. It’s a building not too far from the hospital, actually. They’ll have moved him again by now, but it’s as good a point as any to start our search.’

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

‘Wait,’ Orion held up a hand. ‘Our search?’

‘Sure.’

He exchanged a glance with Poison. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t like what I heard. Besides, if you want to cheat Max, you should really take more care and do it properly. Might as well help you along.’

This time, all of them flinched.

Jordan chuckled. ‘Come on, Max never expected you to just follow his orders, or to deliver without additional motivation. You two have too much history for that.’

Orion felt his face redden in anger and shame.

‘However, with me on board, you might make it.’

‘Why? Why would you betray Rivers?’

Jordan’s grin turned malicious. ‘I had eighteen hours to get out of that hospital. It took me twenty. Made me realise that no matter how valuable I am to Max, I’m still expendable. Besides, by not making that limit, I’m as good as dead any way.’

Orion remembered Rivers’ safeguards. The chip that had been installed in his neck, the one he’d taken out five years ago.

‘How’d you evade the kill switch?’

Orion himself had modified an Opener to fool the device and let it be extracted without exploding. It had been hard work, and he’d had only one try.

‘When you left, I kept your thorn-puller. Max was surprised when he found out you were alive, and he modified the newest batch of implants, but he didn’t switch out the old models.’ Jordan grinned. ‘His bad.’

‘And you decided that now was a good time to go rogue, instead of earlier, why exactly?’

Jordan pulled him closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Broad-range personality drugs.’

He grinned at Orion’s confusion.

‘So, we should move, right? Get out of here?’, Poison asked.

Jordan shook his head and leant back. ‘No. We’d spook Max and other parties watching.’

‘Other parties?’

The situation started to feel less like a conversation and more like a merry-go-round, with Jordan dragging them along a too quick ride.

Jordan shrugged. ‘Since your stunt at that lab, people have been watching.’

Lilly cursed. ‘Fantastic. They caught us on camera? How?’

Jordan shook his head. ‘They have a different kind of scanner. Brain-wave pattern analysis or something, but it works real time. I guess they got your samples when you worked for them five years ago.’

Now he was just plain showing off. But it confirmed that there was a connection, that the people Michael had worked for were involved with Yoshua’s death.

Lilly blanched. ‘How in the hells do you know all that?’

‘I prefer to do my homework. It’s possible they found Michael via the same method. And we might be able to use it to find their new lab. The scanners are custom made and expensive as hell. We might be able to track one. Think you can do that?’

Lilly shrugged. ‘I have no idea what I’m looking for, so no, probably. We could look for clues in the other lab, but they torched it.’

‘Any idea how to emulate certain brainwave patterns?’, Poison asked. ‘We could confuse the scanners.’

Lilly shook his head. ‘I wrote the recognition software, but that’s it. I can probably tell if a pattern is viable, so in theory, we could play around with data until we get something, but that won’t do much good. I’m no neuroscientist.’

Orion rubbed at his eyes. ‘So we got nothing.’

Poison took up her pacing again. ‘Let’s see what the police and Agency servers have to say on this. We can look at the intermediary building, but I’m afraid that won’t help much.’

‘They won’t have a secret lab on record.’

‘No, but they might need to buy a new bulk of Rivers’ drug, if it’s necessary for their procedures. We can follow the shipment.’

Lilly sighed. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Jordan stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes. ‘Wake me when you got something.’

----------------------------------------

‘Orion!’

His eyes snapped open, his brain following sluggishly. ‘Huh?’

Poison was standing over him. ‘Wake up, we gotta go!’

‘What? Where? Why?’ He struggled to sit upright on the bed. Poison’s. Since Jordan had commandeered the couch, she’d offered to let Orion sleep there while they took turns keeping a look out for clues. Seemed there was a clue. Or the military was breaking down their door. He wondered which it was.

‘Explosions,’ Poison answered. ‘Cars flying as far as a block. Oh, and Michael running around setting things on fire with his mind.’

Orion blinked. His brain couldn’t come up with a way to interpret those words in one sentence, in that order, and resorted to a fail-safe response. ‘Oh. Normal Saturday, then.’

Poison scoffed. ‘Come on, we have to find out what’s going on.’

He bent to pick up his clothes. She was right about that one. His mind still hadn’t fit the information into a picture. He needed to see for himself what in the hells was going on. What had happened while he was asleep?

The day before had been so nice and calm. They had checked out the building Jordan had mentioned, and as expected, it had been a bust. It was a safe house the police used before transferring witness protection candidates. If there was anything fishy going on, they hadn’t found it.

Witness protection data itself was – funnily enough – not impossible to get to, but Michael hadn’t been in the system. Of course. Everything that had happened in the last few months pointed to operations going on outside of official records.

Surprisingly, Jordan had been the one to provide a secure back door into the data base, with a dry comment of “Never killed someone because you found their info in witness protection servers, did you”. Orion shuddered at the thought, and the implications. Note to self: never rely on witness protection.

They had continued with listening in on police reports and messing around with Lilly’s old brainwave software. Orion had gone to sleep some time around the fifth or sixth bad joke about Frankenstein’s monster.

Now, as he stumbled out of Poison’s room, the mood was decidedly against joking. Poison and Lilly were crowded around the TV in the living room, staring with wide eyes. Orion joined them.

The screen showed news coverage, with a live ticker running at the bottom edge. The camera moved in a continuous sway, from an elevated viewpoint. Helicopter, perhaps. The image showed a figure moving among crashed and burning cars with jerky, frantic motions. Orion barely recognised him from the pictures they had swiped from the Agency.

On the TV screen, Michael Runner cried out in panic as a military response team shot at him, and lurched towards a crumbling doorway. All around him, the cityscape was in ruins. Walls had collapsed, sections of buildings looked scorched or outright burned. The tarmac had been ripped apart in wide gauges.

The response team was just visible in the corner of the picture. A group of people in unfamiliar uniforms ran toward it, waving their hands, trying to dissuade the soldiers from firing. They didn’t have much luck.

One of the soldiers moved around a car to flank Michael and was thrown back a second later. The camera zoomed in on an outstretched hand, sticking out from behind the car.

‘Shit,’ Orion murmured. ‘Where’s Jordan?’

‘Bathroom.’ Lilly was staring at the TV screen intently, eyes wide, brow furrowed.

The toilet flushed and Jordan emerged from the bathroom shortly after, wiping wet hands on his shirt.

‘You’re out of clean towels,’ he commented.

‘Not our biggest problem right now,’ Poison snapped. Jordan raised his hands in mock surrender at her ire.

Lilly didn’t move his eyes from the screen. ‘Guys, we’ve got to help him.’

‘You can’t,’ Jordan said.

Orion glanced over at him. ‘You got an idea what we’re dealing with?’

Jordan shrugged. ‘I’d say one of the Gods.’

They all turned to stare at him, even Lilly. ‘The Gods are just personality models. That right there is not the doing of any person.’

Jordan huffed. ‘There’ve been rumours going around about black-op research into the matter. There’s five Gods, but Iamé is the only one they’re trying to harness with any regularity. Maybe he’s easiest, or they know the most about him. They’re trying to catch his essence and squeeze it into a host. According to rumours, at least.’

‘You think they used Michael as a host,’ Lilly breathed.

Jordan shrugged again. ‘He’s throwing people through the air without touching them and burning things with his mind. Also, he seems to have brought down what amounts to at least two and a half buildings without military-grade weapons. I think either he’s a host, or he’s on one hell of a hormone trip.’

‘But how does having a simulated personality possessing your mind relate to superpowers?’

‘Listen to your own sentence. If everything is already ridiculous, superpowers are not that far off. If I remember right, this is the first successful harnessing since the Gods departed. Nobody knows what they are capable of right now. They’re self-evolving computer programs. Maybe they hacked reality.’

Orion ran a hand through his hair. ‘Let’s not linger on that, it doesn’t matter why everything is going to shit, just that it is. Any idea on how to stop him?’

‘No. You can’t. Maybe someone’s controlling him, maybe not. I just know there’s no way we’re going up against that thing and coming out alive.’

‘So what are we supposed to do?’

Jordan smiled ruefully. ‘I advise we wait and pray the city doesn’t get levelled.’

----------------------------------------

Zaaron looked up, frowning. Iamé was still slumped, still unmoving. Zaaron had tried several shard configurations since his kin had fallen still. That was longer than usual, much longer. Something wrong, perhaps?

A slither of something not unlike worry flicked through him. He wouldn’t go as far as to call it fear.

If the humans had found a way to destroy them…

Reluctantly, he stretched his senses, and was almost relieved at Iamé’s presence, still connected to his simulated body, pulsing in agitation. He was alive for now, and Zaaron could feel the physical sense routines running. Iamé was experiencing a body, a host.

So the connection had been successful. If they could be harnessed…

Namira would be pleased.

Not that Zaaron cared. He just shrugged his simulated shoulders and returned to his game.

----------------------------------------

Eliah stood in front of the building, eyes empty. As always.

She felt empty, too. No emotion, save for that small flicker she could coax out when she was with Lilly. Well, that he could coax out.

She smiled, just a tug at the corners of her mouth, feeling the muscle tensions against the slack of the rest of her face.

She was doing this for Lilly, too. She had made her decision the second she had seen the news. At the rate the rampage was progressing, the city might be destroyed. People might get hurt. Lilly might even-

No. He would be fine. If there was anything she could give to ensure his safety, she was ready to give it.

Eliah had lost too much. She knew that, and that it had broken something inside her. She’d had to stand by as her brother was taken, had had to wait for him to be returned to her. Years later, he’d been taken again, and again she had waited. The next time she had seen him, he had been a bundle of cloth and blood.

Orion had begged her not to unwrap the body, to spare herself the sight. And she had done as he had asked, had complied as she always did. Had left the bundle wrapped and tortured herself with not knowing what had happened to her brother. She didn’t even know what had caused his death.

It had been a harnessing attempt, that she knew. A failed one. She didn’t know what had gone wrong.

Would she end up like him? Death by some mystery? Had it been an accident, if a collateral one? Would that accident occur again? Why had it not worked before? Or was the host dying part of the plan?

Had they killed him to clean up the tracks of their work?

She stood there, indecisive, ever more questions whirling around in her head, pulling her away, home. Away from putting herself in the hands of the people who had destroyed her world.

But there was no emotion behind the questions, no desire for safety. Instead, there was a word keeping her here, keeping her from bolting, and it did have emotional back-up, a lot of it.

Namira.

One of the people who had taken Yoshua had muttered the name. And then she’d seen a man on TV with abilities nobody should have, and she had set her hopes on a desperate, slim possibility of a link between the two events.

Nobody knew just what the Gods were any more. They had been algorithm, to start with. At least that was the common theory. Maybe they hadn’t been made at all, but discovered. A glitch in the system that was their world, a cheat, granting ways to circumvent the rules.

Or maybe they were just algorithms that had evolved into something greater. There had been one instance of contact after the personalities had departed. It had surprised both sides. The Gods knew only their own world. Maybe it was them who had discovered humanity, not the other way around?

The Gods had definitely been as baffled as the humans when a summoning ritual succeeded. If there had been successful rituals. If they were not legends.

But the rumours also spoke of unimaginable power, and that was not legend, that she had seen.

Eliah knew, in some distant part of her, that she should stay home, leave, let others handle this. It was not her fight, not her responsibility, not her right to intervene. Others would know better, have more resources. More of a chance at success.

But she hated that part of herself. The passivity that had made her not look at her brother, not hold him one last time. The part that made her hollow now, that relished the absence of emotion because it made things easier for those around her, no matter what that meant for herself. She wasn’t important, after all. She could handle it.

In a way, what she was doing now took away her options, too. She was giving herself to someone else, to let them do as they thought best. She was relinquishing control, making herself a tool in somebody else’s hands.

But that was all right. Because it was her courage speaking now, calling the shots, not fear and guilt. Nobody was forcing her into passivity. She was making a decision. In a way, she felt free in giving up her freedom.

And just like that, she made a first step forward, and then she didn’t stop.