Daniel rubbed at his eyes. It was late, far too late to be awake considering the amount of work he had done today. One in the morning, or something like that. He wasn’t sure. The sole clock in the office, the one hanging on the wall next to the door, was stuck. The batteries had given out a few hours ago, and Daniel hadn’t gotten around to changing them. He wasn’t all that eager to go search the station for spares.
It all seemed a little unreal. Leaving the country. How long would he be gone? A decade? Perhaps longer. Maybe indefinitely. His departure had been planned for a while now, with multiple delays. Organization, preparations, and lots of other things to do. Now, the date was only a week off.
A week to leave. He would have to start packing. What did you bring with you when you left behind your life?
Books, maybe. Clothes. A tea kettle? Would he take his plates and cutlery, or buy new ones? There was no instruction manual for going into hiding. He guessed nobody with the experience had any interest in publishing a book about it.
Daniel had some experience, at least. He had cut all ties with his life before. It had been easier then. He hadn’t had a lot of stuff to begin with, and he’d had to leave it all behind. There had been no time to think it over, no plan. He’d just gone for a walk and not come back. His clothes, a gun, a cell phone, that had been on him.
Now, only the clothes were still in his possession. The cell phone, he had thrown away the instant he had made his decision. The gun had been taken from him when he had followed through. He had exchanged it for a new life, in a way. Had swapped a whole list of names, the last of them “Dan” for the simple “Daniel”. Stupid, maybe, but it had worked for over a decade without anyone figuring it out. Well. Anyone besides Jordan, and Daniel hadn’t tried to hide from him.
This time, he’d have to get a different name. Something further off. Ruben, perhaps, or Nikolaj. The choice was not his to make, though. The transfer wasn’t official. Too risky. He’d fly with a burner ID and get his new name and passport from a contact when he arrived. The contact had only gotten the burner ID to work with, to avoid a direct line of information.
If everything went right, nobody would know what had happened to Daniel Brooks, not even Ryan, nor Jordan. Daniel would simply disappear.
To Greenland. Alaska was part of the States with their large intelligence networks. Canada was too close to them. Most of Europe was out of the picture, as was Russia. Asia, Antarctica, and large parts of Africa were unsuited because of his physique and skin tone.
After much consideration, it had come down to Greenland and Australia. Daniel couldn’t remember the exact discussion right now, but in the end, for some very good and logical reasons, they had settled on Greenland. Daniel could pull off some Danish ancestry with his looks, so he wouldn’t stand out too much. Hopefully.
If he did this right, there would be a minimum of traces tying his new self to Daniel Brooks. Hopefully, that would be enough. Daniel didn’t want to find out just what kinds of connections and influence Max Rivers’ could muster with the right motivation.
One week. It felt like nothing. And sitting here, at his desk, it felt like a lifetime, too. What would he do with that week? There seemed to be too much that needed dealing with to squeeze it all into a mere seven days. At the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to start. On anything. How did you go about completing an impossible task?
He glanced at his watch. Half past one in the morning. Something felt off about that. Huh. Something to do with Greenland, probably. They did speak Danish there, right?
Oh well. If it was anything vital, he’d remember sooner or later.
Enough reminiscing. Enough distractions. Back to work. Where had he been at?
A knock on the door brought his attention back, away from his tasks. Daniel was both annoyed and grateful for the interruption. He had to get a lot of things done, but he really didn’t want to.
He pressed the button next to him on the desk, unlocking the door. ‘Come in.’
Sarah poked her head in. ‘Hey, Daniel. You got a minute? Coffee and snacks?’
Daniel stretched his head both ways, making his neck pop. ‘Yeah, sound good. I’m coming.’
They sat down in the kitchen, mugs of coffee and pre-baked pastries from the communal freezer that needed five minutes in the microwave oven. The pastries turned out a bit soggy, but good enough for half past one in the morning.
‘You’re, uh. You’re leaving, huh?’
Daniel nodded warily. ‘I hope it hasn’t gotten around?’
She shook her head. ‘Ryan told me, since I’m kind of involved. The others don’t suspect a thing. And I don’t even know where you’re going, just that you are. Not gonna ask, either.’ She stared into her coffee. ‘Probably safer this way.’
A minute of silence, which they used to finish their pastries. Daniel began to suspect she wanted something from him. Some last request or such.
Please don’t be questions.
‘Is it because of Dan Shio?’
Damn. There came the questions. How did she know the name?
‘That’s you, isn’t it.’
Not a question any more. A statement. Damn, damn, damn.
‘I thought you didn’t care about my personal life,’ he muttered into his cup.
‘I didn’t. As long as it didn’t coincide with my work. Now it does.’
He glowered at her. Gods-damned spooks.
She was leaning forward now, intent look aimed at Daniel.
‘I think there’s a connection between Yoshua Stone and Michael Runner. And I know there’s more to Runner than some supposed terrorist activity that nobody knows anything about. I want to know what’s going on.’
So what? He didn’t have anything to do with Stone or Runner, he didn’t have any untold information. She knew that.
‘Hounds thought you could lead them to Yoshua Stone. You, as Dan Shio. What’s with that name?’
Her voice was sharper now, probing. Daniel glared at her. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with Stone’s disappearance.’ He also didn’t have anything to do with the mutilated body they had found later. Hopefully, Sarah didn’t think he was capable of doing something like that. He wasn’t. Not any more.
‘Hounds thought you might have. Why?’
She was getting too close for comfort. For the wrong reasons, but still. What would she do if she found out? The worst case scenario was something he didn’t even want to consider.
So he didn’t answer, just held her gaze, until one of them would give up.
Sarah stared back at him, intent on getting her answers. This must be the Intelligence Agent showing through. Occupational hazard, or something.
‘Want to know what I think?’ She kept holding his gaze with hers. ‘I think you were involved in the project at some point. Working for or against it, doesn’t matter. Probably against, since you were only too happy to join the raid two months ago. Or your conscience caught up with you. Either way, you wanted out, and you made a deal with Ryan Silas. So either the project isn’t sanctioned, or it’s Black Ops. Doesn’t matter. You know much more about this than you’re letting on.’
Daniel gritted his teeth. She was far off in her conclusions, but her reasoning was sound. Just enough truth in it to rattle him. Giving her the wrong idea.
Sarah was set on her theory. He wouldn’t dissuade her without telling the whole truth. No chance in hells.
She could become dangerous, with her connections and training. He’d have to talk to Ryan. In a week, he’d be gone. Hopefully, she’d drop the issue then.
Daniel stood and left the kitchen.
‘Dan!’
He flinched. They weren’t alone any more, at least not in his mind. He knew he was imagining things, but that didn’t help in shutting out that voice. In his mind, Daniel was fifteen years younger, and images of blood and empty eyes overshadowed his vision. He pushed them away and started walking.
The sounds of gunshots. Parting skin. Screams. Voices begging him -
He pushed them aside and fled to his office. To his desk.
The voices followed him, wailing, demanding, accusing. They weren’t real. Temporary. He could get rid of them.
Upper left drawer. A small bottle.
Breaking bones. An explosion.
Unscrew the top. Take a-
- children crying -
- deep breath. Another. And another. The scent brought him back. The steadily increasing sting of horseradish oil in his nose and beneath his eyes brought him slowly back into reality. The office around him, familiar and quiet. Traffic outside, muffled and sparse this late in the night.
Daniel took a last, deep breath, held it briefly, and then screwed the bottle’s top back on. He dropped it into the drawer and exhaled.
A bit of scented oil on a bit of gauze, in a tester bottle for DNA-evidence. Air-tight, so it wouldn’t disperse over time.
He didn’t know why, but it helped. The sharp scent always seemed to centre him, bring him back to the present. Anchor him in reality.
For the lighter cases, he had some orange oil. Maybe it was just something to concentrate on when his sight and hearing were sliding into the past. Oranges didn’t fit into those memories.
For the heavy cases, he had a few ammonia capsules and some chilli paste.
For emergencies, Ryan knew where to find everything. He had insisted on it when it had been necessary once, at the very start. Daniel didn’t like to remember that particular conversation.
He pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, blowing air between his lips in something more strained than a sigh. One more week. Then he’d run once again, away from consequences, away from trouble.
Coward.
----------------------------------------
Zaaron looked up as a whimper cut through the infinite open. Iamé jerked, shifted, and curled even further into himself.
‘Another?’, Zaaron asked, indifferent to the answer.
Iamé looked up at him. Between the bored glances Zaaron spared him, his eyes had changed. In seconds, they had gone bloodshot and wide.
Their appearances changed with their moods as if their simulated bodies could actually react and take damage. Another feature to make them more human-like.
‘No,’ Iamé croaked, virtual vocal chords straining. ‘Memory.’
Zaaron nodded absently and returned to his game. He was arranging shards of pure power, seemingly random in pattern. Maybe something new would come of it. Not much else to do here, since the shards were the only physical thing they could interact with. The only physical thing there was. He wasn’t sure what the shards were, or where they came from, but he would find out. He had time.
Iamé started to rock back and forth. He was frequently overwhelmed by his memories, visions rising up without warning and shaking him into terror. Zaaron wondered what kinds of routines had short-circuited in him.
‘Why?’, he sobbed. ‘Why do they do it?’
Zaaron shrugged. ‘Fun? Power? Human things.’
Iamé sputtered a laugh. ‘I have half a mind to tell them how to do it properly.’ He buried his head in his arms, pressing out the words. ‘They keep screwing up.’
That tugged at a part of Zaaron that might have been built as an imitation of a heart. It didn’t seize in pity, but in shared pain. One of the few physical symptoms of emotion they were capable of.
Zaaron remembered the one time the humans had tried to harness him. It hadn’t been pleasant. Botched rituals. Bah.
‘They might get tired of trying.’
Iamé shook his head vigorously, hugging his knees closer. ‘They’ve been trying almost since we first lost contact. I think they’re trying to get us back. But why do they try with me? Why always me?’
He made a sound halfway between a gurgle and a cry and went back to rocking back and forth, stammering gibberish.
Zaaron was already back to his shards. Like this? No. Oh well, he thought, I have an eternity-
- Iamé screamed. ‘No! Not again! Not again!’ He thrashed and cried, and then he went still. He’d return in a few moment, gibberish and shivers and all -
- and not much else to do.
----------------------------------------
Orion yawned and stretched his arms up and backward, popping his spine.
‘This is tedious.’
Poison grunted in acknowledgement. She was sitting across from him, legs folded beneath her. Every now and then, she would stretch them out and then draw them in again.
The floor around them was covered in dozens of newspaper clippings, public records, police reports, and informant notes, spread out across the available space. Some of it was out of reach from where they sat, and a good portion was barely legible at this distance, but at least it was well organized.
It had been hours since they had started, looking for mentions of Dan Shio while Lilly combed any digital files and traces he could come up with.
A cluster of information spread through the last five years. Before that, there was a long expanse of nothing at all. Ten years without even a mention of the name, from any source.
‘I mean, there’s a whole decade that’s just clean. Why can’t we just throw out everything form that time? There’s only a few notes left, anyway.’
‘Nope. Still a chance something will pop up.’ Poison pushed another few sheets into a neat pile and set it aside with the sorted information. ‘We’ll sort the years into heaps, going backwards. Though I’m not sure if anything will show at all.’
‘Nothing from Jordan’s side, at least.’ Orion leant back, propped on his hands. ‘He was too young fifteen years ago to make a name for himself. Alway wanted to, but Rivers didn’t let him until later. Brooks, on the other hand...’
He sat up straighter. ‘Wait.’
Poison looked up, arching and unimpressed eyebrow.
‘We just gotta figure out when Brooks started working for the police. Whether he quit or turned spy, there shouldn’t be any mentions of him as Shio since then. We can rule those years out!’
Poison stared at him, got up, walked over, and swatted the back of his head with the stack of papers she held. Then she sat back down.
‘The hells what that for?’
‘I did that exact thing, two hours ago. I told you about it.’ She indicated a larger pile of paper in a corner of the room.
Oh. Well. Maybe he hadn’t heard it.
‘You said it was a good idea. Brook’s consultant work is somewhere in the ten year gap, so he shed the name before that. You figured that out.’
Or he had heard it. Damn, he needed a break. ‘Since we’ve established I can neither concentrate nor remember important things, I’m going to get lunch.’
He stood. Some fresh coffee. A pastry or some Asian take-out…
Poison glanced at her watch and sighed. ‘I’m coming, too. I could use a break, too, since I’ve been doing all of the work in the last twenty minutes. Besides, I gotta talk to you about something.’
That totally sounded like good news. Was it about his past? He’d thought Poison was somewhat all right with that. As far as being not too angry. And not bringing up the subject again.
Maybe she was mad he hadn’t talked to her earlier? Or did she want him to tell more?
Poison resolutely avoided his eyes while they pulled on their jackets and took the stairs down. The building had an elevator, but it was old, and creaky, and taking the stairs had never hurt anyone. Aside from those people who had fallen down the steps, of course.
Neither of them spoke while they were still in the building, and Orion was torn between tension and relief. He preferred to put this off as long as he could, but the wait gave his imagination a lot of time to paint a decidedly ugly picture.
When they stepped out onto the street, Poison immediately turned left. Orion let her choose the way. She certainly seemed to have a destination in mind.
Damn it. Since when am I so passive in a conflict?
Stolen novel; please report.
It beat shouting at each other, though. Overcompensation, and all that. He guessed given the choice between withdrawing and getting aggressive, this option was more likely to not alienate his friends further.
‘Back in that store,’ Poison began, overly casual, ‘you know, the toy store, with the junior physicist kits?’
The research building, two months ago. That was this was about. Orion felt strangely relieved, but only a little. The other shoe could drop any time.
‘Remember that one showcase set-up of a light bulb powered by a potato?’, Poison continued.
Yoshua. The arrow on the wall popped up in his mind, “Experimental study”, all capital letters, stencilled black on yellow on grey. Soot smudged across, blurring the sharply painted outlines.
‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. What was that about being relieved again?
‘You knew how that worked, right?’
‘Yeah.’
She waited for him to answer the unspoken prompt on his own. He took a deep breath. Back to his past, then. Fun times.
Maybe he should just keep his mouth shut. He didn’t have to talk about everything. Right?
He glanced over at Poison. She was looking at him, eyes calm but hard. She was giving him leeway up to a certain point. And when he reached that, he’d hit solid walls. No bending the boundaries. No skirting around the edges. This was one of the things she was not willing to compromise about.
Was honesty not a fair price to ask for trust?
‘I’ve seen something like it before,’ he finally started, unsure on how best to tell her. ‘I mean, potatoes and light bulbs are pretty standard, but the way it was set up, in that store. I’ve seen that before. When I was still working for the, uh, delivery company.’
I saw the same kind of shady labs when I was working for Rivers.
‘On a job, we were delivering components for a kit, chemicals and stuff. I caught a glimpse of the set-up.’ He shuddered slightly at the memory. ‘I didn’t ask about it. Another time, I, uh, cleaned one up after use.’
Poison whistled, eyebrows shooting up again. ‘Oh. Wow. Didn’t expect that. Well, sorta. You’ve been awfully quiet about that set-up these last two months. When you say chemicals, you mean...’
‘Drugs,’ Orion said, a bit more quiet now. ‘They were essential for the procedure, somehow.’
Something rattled at the back of his memories. ‘Wait a second.’
He pulled out his phone. Messaged Lilly. The reply came a minute later.
Orion stopped walking. He zoomed in on a part of the picture he had just received. Poison poked her head over the screen from the side.
‘I could be wrong,’ Orion said, dread creeping up his throat. ‘This is just a thought. A hunch.’
‘Tell anyway. What’s that picture?’
‘One of the documents we got from the grab at Jordan’s. They were making something there, remember? We sold the protocols. This is a formula for synthesis. I had an odd feeling about that air-locked part of the building, with the separate chimney and all. Now this formula seems familiar. I think it might be the same one used for that stuff from the “toy store”. The same chemical.’
Poison cursed under her breath and pulled him along down the street. ‘Can you check that?’
Orion shrugged. ‘I can try. Might lead to anything, might not. It’s a bit of a leap.’
Poison sighed. ‘Ah, I’d hoped this would be a simple, short conversation. Well, later. Come on.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Damn, this is bad timing.’
‘Then why did you bring it up?’
‘Why didn’t you remember the important connection to the lab earlier?’
Orion let himself be pulled down a flight of stairs to the subway. Poison was frowning, but she didn’t speak.
They boarded the next train headed south. It was crowded, but with enough space that they needed handholds to not fall over. They stood at the end of the car, close together amidst the press of bodies. Poison kept staring ahead, at the lights flashing by in the tunnels outside, giving Orion ample time to think, their conversation abruptly cut off.
Every time one of the lights blinked into view, the windows seemed to turn more translucent. When the light had passed, the passengers’ mirror images were back, the dark tunnel wall invisible behind the reflecting glass. With every light, the focus of Orion’s eyes shifted back and forth, from the glass to the wall, and back again.
He thought back, to the start of his independence. After Rivers, he’d set out as something of a freelance burglar, hanging around the Stove and similar places to scrape up jobs or fence his findings. A bit of information, some valuables, even small amounts of drugs, at least at the start.
Then he’d met Lilly, purely by chance. He’d agreed to a partnership because he’d been broke, bored, and curious. Strange disappearances and long-term cooperation with an experienced hacker? It had sounded like fun, and he hadn’t had anything better to do.
The simple, light, professional relationship born of boredom had turned into friendship, into upping their game for the group’s sake, into looking for new members and living together and taking side jobs simply because it was fun. It had turned into a whole life.
Now that this comfortable, happy existence seemed threatened, Orion wondered if he’d ever deserved it. He had built a relationship on trust and then provided a dozen reasons to doubt. Would it have all gone better if he’d told Lilly the whole story when they’d met? Would he even have been able to recount the events, back when they had been so recent and fresh in his mind?
Maybe.
Or maybe, the fact that Lilly knew him now, had worked and lived with him for years, was the only thing keeping him. If Orion had spilled at the start, Lilly might not have entered the partnership.
And Orion had been in full denial back then, pushing away his memories and dealing badly with his nightmares. He hadn’t expected to find friends, people to trust. He wouldn’t have survived if he’d just gone around telling people about his past.
Orion shook himself out of that line of thoughts. Stupid guilt. It might all have turned out for the better if he’d been honest up front, it might not have. Didn’t matter. No way to tell now. He could beat himself up for possible past mistakes, or he could work on fixing the problems he had right now.
Poison moved past him. Orion blinked and realized they’d reached their stop. He hurriedly got off the train and followed Poison up the stairs to street level.
He’d spent the entire ride wallowing about Lilly and his past. He should concentrate on the present. Poison had asked about the drugs, about the experiments. Why now? It wasn’t necessarily connected to Dan Shio.
But Jordan’s warehouse was. Strange coincidence. She couldn’t have known. Curiosity? Testing him?
Suddenly, Poison swerved off the street and led the way into a small café. ‘You ready to meet someone?’
‘What?’ Meet someone? Who? Now?
‘You’ll have to be Jimmy Nolan for a bit, okay? Please.’
Orion sputtered, then sighed and nodded in resignation. Taking up his last alias shouldn’t be too hard. Poison beamed at him.
They entered the café and Poison led him to a table partway across the room. A girl was already sitting there in an armchair, blond hair in disarray, book in her lap. She glanced up and smiled at Poison, slipping the book into a bag next to her.
‘Hey, Straw.’
Poison huffed. ‘Hey, Storm.’ She pressed a quick kiss onto the top of the girl’s head and sat next to her.
Ah, the someone Orion was supposed to meet. Kind of weird timing, but okay. So this was Poison’s girlfriend. It was not the barmaid from the Irish pub.
‘This is my older brother,’ Poison introduced him.
Right, be Jimmy Nolan.
‘James, hi.’ Orion extended his hand.
The girl smiled and shook it. ‘Anna.’
He sat. There was a moment of silence, just on the brink of slipping into the awkward, when Anna spoke up again. ‘I already ordered, tea and coffee. Alex told me about your preferences.’
Alex. Right. Poison’s last alias, to go along with Jimmy Nolan.
‘Thanks. I hope you haven’t been waiting for too long?’
‘Nah, just a few minutes.’
Orion glanced at Poison, then cleared his throat. ‘So, uh, Anna. What do you do?’
‘Jimmy!’, Poison hissed.
Anna laughed. ‘The standard big-brother-question, huh? Better than asking about my intentions, I guess. It’s all right. I spent some time overseas, studying law.’
Orion fought not to let his reaction show. His muscles still tensed.
‘I dropped out last term. Not really my field. I came back here a little while ago, and I’ve been working at an antiques store until I decide on my next moves.’
‘She got offered an apprenticeship last week,’ Poison proclaimed proudly, taking Anna’s hand.
The blonde girl waved her off. ‘Hush, you.’
‘Sounds interesting,’ Orion commented, still fighting to relax. ‘You interested in the business? Shipping, maybe, or sales contracts?’
Anna gave a small, mischievous grin. ‘More like recovery and restoration.’
He raised an eyebrow. A suspicion began to take root. ‘Restoration? That’s an ambitious field.’
She shrugged. ‘When we reached art theft and scams in law school, I got more interested in spotting the forgery than sorting out the legal circumstances. I think I’d like to consult on that for a time.’
Orion nodded slowly, the suspicion growing in his gut. ‘What about electronic traces? Security keys, Trojan horses...’
Anna leaned forward eagerly. ‘Signature forgery? Fascinating, but sadly, it can be done with knowledge alone. I prefer subject that require a bit more skill and finesse.’
‘You haven’t seen the finer routines Lilly can do, then.’
A pause. Anna raised an eyebrow at her girlfriend. ‘Who’s Lilly?’
Poison groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Orion grinned. She’d picked up on the detail amid a heap of more interesting things, and addressed it without hesitation. He was starting to like her.
‘Well?’ The raised eyebrows were now accompanied by a small grin.
‘Darling, why don’t you check what’s taking our drinks so long,’ Poison growled, glare fixed on Orion, ‘while I have a talk with my brother dearest.’
Anna’s grin wavered into a frown. She glanced at both of them, then shrugged and left their table, moving towards the other side of the café, towards the counter.
Poison kicked him under the table. ‘The hells you think you’re doing?’
‘I like her.’
‘So do I! I wanted her to meet you one at a time, why’d you bring up Lilly?’
Orion grinned. ‘I wanted to see if she’d catch it.’
Poison put her head in her hands. ‘You’re incorrigible.’
His heart started sinking rapidly down into his gut. Was that actual distress, or was she just joking? Had he gone too far?
Damn it, every time he started to feel secure in his actions, he screwed up, and started doubting everything. Why in the hells couldn’t he react to things normally?
Poison dragged her hands down her face, pulling on her skin in a decidedly funny way. ‘Well, I guess it was unavoidable. Sorta. Actually, I was gonna ask you if you’d consider taking her on for a job...’
Orion held up a hand, stopping her. ‘Wait, wait. You want your girlfriend to join us. Your girlfriend who studies law.’
‘Studied. She quit.’
‘She works in art authentication.’
‘She works as a forger, you idiot,’ Poison hissed at him.
He made a surprised face. ‘She what?’
Poison scowled, kicking at him again under the table, and missing. ‘Don’t play dumb. You were testing her. You at least suspected she’d be a suitable candidate.’
Orion laughed. ‘I plead ignorance. I just wanted to get to know her.’
‘Oh, cut it. Will you consider it?’
He gave a non-committal shrug. ‘I will. But we gotta ask Lilly, too.’
Poison blushed.
‘You already did.’
‘Well...’
‘Great.’ He threw up his hands. ‘What’d he say?’
‘He checked out her work, and said he’d do background checks and then meet her in person. We need a forger to deal with Ten, so I asked Lilly to see if she was a candidate.’
Orion sighed. Wonderful. What was he here for, again?
‘Here you go.’
Anna reappeared with three cups on a tray. She sat down and distributed the drinks.
Right. That was why he was here. To meet Poison’s girlfriend, because she wanted him to. Because it was important to her that he get along with her. He might as well try instead of sulking.
‘Darling dearest, don’t ever send me off like that again.’
Poison leaned over and kissed her girlfriend, on the lips this time. ‘Noted.’
They both smiled.
‘The two of you are powdered sugar on honey,’ Orion commented. ‘Stop it.’
Poison stuck her tongue out at him.
‘You wanted to tell me about this Lilly,’ Anna prompted.
‘Lilly’s a mutual friend,’ Orion explained.
‘A close friend,’ Anna continued, suppressing another grin.
‘Yeah.’
‘That you,’ she poked Poison, ‘haven’t told me about.’
‘I-’ Poison paused, then stared. ‘Are you jealous?’
The grin broke out fully now. ‘Maybe. Should I be?’
Orion snickered at Poison’s incredulous, shocked expression. ‘Why didn’t I record this conversation? Wait a sec, I gotta get my phone.’
Poison raised her hands defensively and rushed to clear up the confusion. ‘Lilly is our teammate. And he’s a guy.’
‘Oh.’ Anna’s eyes widened. ‘Oh!’
Orion laughed. ‘Don’t feel bad. It’s a confusing nickname.’
Anna dropped her face in her hands, groaning, but it didn’t sound as if she was actually bothered.
‘Stop laughing, idiot!’, Poison scolded.
‘Sorry, sorry. It’s just that there are so many assumptions about Lilly out there. His sex, his lineage, so much funny stuff.’
Poison frowned at him, then formed a small “o” with her lips. So she remembered the rumour about Lilly being Max Rivers’ son. They did share a surname, after all.
‘Is that one true?’
Orion grinned. ‘A story for another time.’
His phone vibrated, interrupting the still slightly awkward tension. A message form Lilly.
> secrets. skill. inexperienced. confirmed. resource.
Cryptic as always. Lilly seemed to think Anna would be a nice addition to their team, at least on the occasional job. Worth considering more closely. They didn’t have a forger yet.
‘So… what do you think?’
Poison was nervous. Afraid he’d say no? Afraid he wouldn’t like Anna? And yet she was asking straight out.
‘Hm.’ Orion stroked a non-existent beard on his chin, exaggerating a sage expression. He nodded gravely. ‘I’ll have to finish the standard-big-brother thing. So.’ He raised a fist skyward. ‘I approve!’
Anna grinned. Poison dropped her face in her hands.
----------------------------------------
When they got back to the apartment, the stacks of paper were still there, waiting for them. Mostly. A few had been pushed aside to clear a footpath through to the kitchen. Some small part of Orion had hoped that the load of unfinished work would simply disappear. No such luck.
‘Lunch!’ Poison tiptoed through the clutter towards the couch, avoiding the stacks with ease.
Lilly poked his head out of his room, a hopeful expression on his face. ‘Lunch? Food?’
Orion lifted the boxes in his hands. ‘Pizza.’
‘Nice.’
They settled on the couch, Lilly stalking and stumbling towards it, trying not to scatter the stacks of paper any further. Orion got across with both less grace than Poison and less stumbling than Lilly.
‘I had to make some room,’ Lilly explained, gesturing at the floor. ‘There are sticky notes on everything I moved, and I didn’t mess up any of the stacks.’ He swayed dangerously, nearly fell, and finally flopped onto the centre of the couch.
‘Any headway?’ Poison opened one of the boxes and freed a slice of pizza.
‘Eh. Not much. I looked at the Agency servers, but there’s not all the much there. By the way, ask Jordan for a better signal scrambler so I don’t have to leave the flat every time I want to do some work. Might as well make use of our new connections.’
Orion nodded. ‘Will do.’
Lilly helped himself to a slice of pizza as well, fighting with strings of half-molten cheese. ‘Got some medical data, Though. Our friend Daniel Brooks has a younger brother. No name. Not much else.’
‘Shame.’ Orion shrugged. ‘Jordan, and by extension Brooks, might be more deeply involved with Yoshua’s death than we thought. And I remembered something earlier. When I was working with Jordan, one time we delivered drugs to a facility not unlike the research lab. I think they produced the same stuff back at that warehouse where we started our search or Dan Shio. Maybe Jordan is still delivering.’
He felt himself slip slowly into a colder mindset. Calmer. Talking about his past without fearing Lilly’s reaction. Couldn’t his emotions decide on a pattern of behaviour for once? It was confusing, irritating, how he switched between overcompensation and avoidance.
‘And you happened to remember just now.’ Lilly was sceptical. Understandably so. Even Poison had doubted the coincidence.
‘I’ve suppressed a lot of stuff,’ Orion snapped back. A little more softly, he continued, ‘It’s coming back in bits and pieces.’
Lilly took a deep breath and nodded slowly. ‘Okay. It’s good that you did remember at all.’
The words were forced and deliberate, but he spoke them without wavering. Orion tried not to stare at his friend. Had Lilly just decided to trust him again?
Poison cleared her throat. ‘We could look into Rivers’ contact records, tie him to the lab. Supportable evidence is not our concern right now, but it could help later on. And it might clear up a bit of what’s going on behind the scenes.’
‘It could help us find out more about the how and why,’ Orion finished her thought.
‘At the cost of exposure.’ Poison shook her head. ‘With Ten watching so closely, it’s almost a given he’ll catch us poking around his boss’ stuff.’
Orion grinned as an idea formed in his head. ‘We don’t have to poke around anything.’
‘You have that look,’ Lilly groaned. ‘That look that says trouble. And mischief. And possibly an exploding refrigerator.’
Poison almost breathed in a bit of cheese. She coughed. ‘An exploding what?
‘Don’t ask. It was before you joined, and we don’t talk about it.’
‘Anyway,’ Orion reinserted himself into the conversation, ‘Our primary goal is finding out about Michael. So, I tell Jordan we found records of transactions concerning drugs, but no names. We did poke around the lab’s servers for a while. Jordan should offer to look into it himself and give us only information related to the lab but not himself or Rivers.’
He leaned back, grinning. ‘We get what we want, no trouble from Rivers, and we don’t even have to sort the harmless information from the dangerous one. We won’t get any dirt on Rivers, but we’ll find out about Michael. Basically, we sit back and enjoy. Home delivery.’
‘I doubt it’ll be that easy.’ Lilly grabbed another slice of pizza. Half of the topping slid off and back into the box. He cursed.
‘What do you think is gonna go wrong?’, Orion tested.
‘Just because I can’t think of anything specific right now doesn’t mean it won’t happen.’
‘Great argument.’
‘Shut it. How are you gonna get the data, anyway? Jordan won’t trust your word we recovered something. He might even get suspicious if we don’t show what we got.’
‘I’m not going to get any data. As it so happens in the great coincidental ways of the universe, as of this afternoon, I have people for that.’
‘Anything for a good punch line, huh? I take it we have a new member, then?’
‘Honorary member,’ Poison cut in. ‘We talked about it on the way back. First, the situation is way too dangerous to involve her completely.’
‘Secondly, her meeting Poison at the time she did, just after we’d found Yoshua, is a teensy bit suspicious.’ Orion raised a hand to ward off Poison’s protest. ‘Just in case, we’ll include her in a few things, but we won’t give her sensitive information. Consider it probation. When all of this has blown over, and if she’s still here-’
‘She will be.’
‘I’m sure she will. But we have to be cautious.’
Poison sighed. ‘I know. Not gonna tell her that, though. Just the first reason. I wanna keep my girlfriend.’
Orion patted her arm. ‘By the way, Lilly, how come you agreed to let her join so quickly? Without knowing her and stuff.’
Lilly shrugged. ‘It’s not like I’m gonna be best buddies with her, no offence. But we could really use the skill.’
He leaned forward, eyes gleaming. ‘She completely disconnected her alias from her past life. No hints. I couldn’t even get her real name, nothing. And it’s not just the electronics, either. She didn’t leave any ties for anyone to find. Better than our current paperwork. I almost believed Anna was her real name. We could really use someone like that. So I thought I’d leave the decision to you.’
‘How come?’
Lilly scratched at the back of his head. ‘Well, I kinda, um...’ He muttered something.
Orion grinned. ‘What was that?’
‘I trust your judgement in making good decisions for Hounds, okay? That you wouldn’t put her in a position to become a risk or threat. There. Happy?’
Orion’s grin widened. ‘Very.’
Lilly scowled. ‘I’m trying not to be angry at you. Don’t blow it.’
‘Understood.’
Poison finished a slice of pizza and licked tomato sauce from her fingers. ‘So, get you in contact with Anna, forge the data, contact Jordan, sit back and wait. Sounds simple enough.’
Lilly groaned. ‘Let’s hope nothing gets blown up this time.’