The workshop was not much warmer than the air outside. Orion kept his jacket closed and looked around, taking in the familiar space. Pale white light illuminated shelves of tools. Nothing out of place, everything clean and tidy.
For some reason, Orion always expected the air to taste dusty and stale, but he breathed only the faint scent of metal and oil.
Lilly locked the door and led them around a few corners, to a cleared-off table, with a lightbulb almost directly overhead. A steady scuffing sound reached them from somewhere further into the workshop. Eliah tinkering with something, probably.
They stood around the table for a few seconds, glancing at each other. Hounds seemed to be waiting for their leader to make the start.
Orion looked around and found a short stool. He dragged it over, one-handed, wood scraping against the floor, and sat heavily.
‘Out with it, what’s up with the cops?’
Lilly made a helpless gesture. ‘Good question. That Agent from the flash drive, Sarah Pike, showed up at the bar to talk to me. She didn’t make any move to arrest me, neutral ground and such. But I thought I might tell you, and the extra caution can’t hurt.’
‘What did she talk to you about?’
‘She warned me off not to annoy Max Rivers, and to stay safe.’ Lilly shook his head. ‘I’m not too sure what to think about it.’
Orion stared at the table. So the cops knew they were looking into Rivers. Did they know about the warehouse? About Michael? Did they know about Dan Shio and his connections?
Was there something else? What connected Hounds to Rivers right now?
Years-old paranoia crept down between his shoulder blades. He cursed and shook it off. ‘Any movement from Rivers? Anyone looking into us?’
Lilly gave a half shrug. ‘They are looking for whoever broke into their warehouse. Someone hasn’t fallen for the rival gang story. And they think the perpetrator most likely got shot on the way out.’ He looked pointedly at Orion. ‘They don’t know it was us, at least not yet.’
‘So either the Agency or the police or whatever knows we were there, or there’s something else going on.’ Orion ran both hands through his hair. Too many possibilities, too many unknown elements. He hated it when that happened. Maybe Rivers knew exactly who had trespassed into his territory. Maybe he had already sent -
‘Why would that Agent warn us off, thought?’, Poison interjected. ‘I don’t buy into the whole “stay safe” bullshit.’
Lilly scoffed. ‘Of course not. She’s tried that play with me before, but I don’t trust her.’ He hesitated. ‘She did say she was in here against orders.’
‘Yeah, cause cops always tell the truth, especially around known criminals. And she would definitely tell you for some reason other than making you believe she cared. Who knows, maybe she’s different!’
Lilly’s cheeks flushed. ‘I told you I don’t trust her!’
‘Seems like you do.’
‘You’re paranoid.’
‘Yeah, well, you’re gullible.’
‘Quiet!’, Orion shouted. ‘Gods, you’re like little kids!’
Both Lilly and Poison seemed suddenly interested in their fingernails, shifting their weight uncomfortably.
‘Can we get back on track? I don’t buy Pike’s concern, either, but the whole thing is too blunt. She can’t expect us to stay away from Rivers because of her little show.’
‘Maybe...’ Poison hesitated. ‘Maybe she wants us to go after Rivers. To lead her to Michael, if she thinks those two are connected. OR so we can fight each other while the police sit back and wait to finish off the survivor.’
Speculation wasn’t getting them anywhere. They didn’t even know if Rivers had any information on Michael at all. Nobody knew anything for sure right now. Not them, not the cops, probably not even the Agency. It would be too hasty to act on suspicions and try to set up a trap that was likely to fail or backfire spectacularly.
Lilly opened his mouth to retort to Poison’s accusations, but in the end he just sighed. ‘Yeah. I guess we’ll have to consider the possibility. Either they want to keep us from Rivers, or sacrifice us to get close to him. There’s no way we’re supposed to come out on top.’
There were a few uncertain seconds of silence as they each pored over their own thoughts. Finally, Orion took the lead again.
‘All right. The way I see it, we have two options: speed up, or slow down. Our current speed is obviously catching too much attention over too great a time span, especially from the side of the cops. So either we hit quick and take off, or we lie low and sit this out a bit longer, wait for the heat to cool.’
He sat back, and almost fell off his stool, forgetting it had no back. Shifting into another somewhat comfortable position, he waited and let the other two mull over the possibilities. He’d make up his own plan and then listen to their suggestions, to check any blind spots he might come across, or to gain efficiency. Ultimately, he would make the choice. Someone had to.
Orion desperately wanted to just decide on a plan of action and be done with it, but his team wouldn’t react well to that. And he guessed he was supposed to include them. There tended to be things he overlooked, sometimes. They had a few minutes to brainstorm ideas. No rush.
He let the others think it out and mentally went over the options himself. He didn’t want them to be a sitting target for Jordan to find, but he also didn’t want to aggravate Rivers to a point that he would be hunted down across borders. Difficult to see which action would lead to which outcome, without any information on their opponents’ stand.
So, indecisive as he was, Orion started playing out his partners' likely arguments in his head.
Poison would go with the quick hit-and-run style, grab what they could and get out before their adversaries had time to prepare any ploys. It had always been her preferred method, even more so before she had joined Hounds.
Lilly was another matter. He was more willing to sit things out, wait for an opening to improve chances and decrease risks. He had been looking for Michael for five years, and he wouldn't give up. But he might also be inclined to leave this and wait for a better opportunity.
Though Orion guessed that with him smitten over Eliah, Lilly would tend towards an option that allowed them to continue their operations in this city rather than running to another.
Personally, Orion thought it was good that Lilly had managed to let something other than his main objective have an impact on his life, especially since there was no guarantee they would succeed. Life had to go on, driven by something other than Michael.
On the other hand, he couldn't really understand how unrequited romantic affection could weigh this heavily on Lilly's judgement, or how Lilly could make himself vulnerable because of something that was most certainly not a relationship.
But then again, that was Orion's problem – or advantage.
He turned the options over in his thoughts, went over all of their dispositions, and smiled as a plan assembled itself in his head, fitting together of its own accord. Imagination was a funny thing.
Right now, he saw two main problems, flaws in the different routes to take, worst-case scenarios. If Michael was in the city, and Rivers was onto them, they might rush in and flee, but then the gained information would help them in no significant way and they would generate dangerous enemies. Orion was more than hesitant to cross Rivers too often or too blatantly.
If they decided to stay and let things unfold on their own, they might lose the trail or have another faction – Max Rivers, the cops, multiple others – snatch away their prize.
Orion gathered himself from his thoughts and glanced up. Poison met his eyes briefly, while Lilly was still staring at the table, thinking. Another minute, and he raised his eyes to meet their gazes. Orion motioned for him to begin.
Lilly shrugged – he was doing that a lot today – and took a deep breath. 'I think we should hit now, hard and quick, and then lie low in the city. We have enough funds to sit out the aftermath, and we can keep an eye out for whatever shakes loose.'
Orion paused, taken aback. Well, that was unexpected. Lilly actually wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Was he losing his calm or finally getting a bit more daring? Orion found himself grinning a bit at either thought.
This mode of operations would bring advantages along with a lot of risks. Orion doubted they would be able to hide themselves as completely as Lilly seemed to imagine. It was worth considering, still.
'Poison?'
She didn't look happy. Strange. This was her kind of thing, her way of doing a job.
'I agree that we should stay in the city.'
Say what?
'We have a good thing going on, contacts, network, cover. If the cops want to flush us out, our running away won't go unnoticed. But we shouldn't risk things with rushing in now. Let's wait a bit. Either the cops want us to stay out, or they'll notice we're not playing their game and step up themselves. Either way, we can pick up scraps, listen in, follow without stirring up dirt for ourselves.'
Lilly shook his head vigorously. 'Then we risk losing sight of Michael. This is the closest we have come to finding him yet. I won't let this trail go cold.'
'Whether or not we will act is not yet decided,' Orion interjected.
Lilly stared at him, eyes blank. 'Michael is the reason we formed Hounds. Have you forgotten? The reason I've been working with you. To further the search. If Hounds won't get me closer to that goal, I'll have to do it on my own.'
----------------------------------------
Poison flinched at the cold in Lilly's voice. What was he saying? Leaving Hounds? He couldn't do that. He couldn't mean that. They had been working together for so long, for fun and money and thrill. There was that general course throughout, a far away goal that she had never really thought they'd achieve. One guy couldn't have been holding them together for years, there was more tying them into a group. It was more of a connection. More affection for each other.
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Right?
Or was that just what she was telling herself? Maybe she felt drawn to the guys, but who said they had the same opinion of her? Would they need her, or even want her, after they'd found Michael and their goal was accomplished?
She had been the last to join, when Lilly and Orion had already been up and running as a team, had already worked and searched together. She wasn't as close to either than they were to each other, didn't know them as well. Didn't have the dedication to Michael. Wasn't as important.
Orion ripped her out of her thoughts, voice dropping to be almost as cold as Lilly's, but not filled with icy rage. It held less emotion, and what little it carried was seeping with contempt.
'It seems that you have forgotten one important thing, Alexander.'
This wasn’t good. He never called them by their real names. Never.
Poison realized something, then. Orion was dangerous. She didn’t know much about his past. He didn’t talk about it. But she saw something in his eyes now, heard it in his voice; whatever he had done before Hounds, it hadn’t been a peaceful pastime. She should be very, very cautious.
'When you came to me,' Orion continued in that almost-toneless voice, ‘you trusted that I would act in the best interest of our shared goal, that I would lead the right way, even if you could not see it. For years, you have continued to trust in me, again and again after every decision I made. So tell me, have I not shown myself to be worthy of that trust in the last five years?'
'Yeah, you've held up your part of the deal, Sixty-Two.' Lilly's voice was venom, but as the last words left his lips, he froze, shocked at what he had just said.
Lilly used that name, that number, Sixty-Two, only when Orion lost himself in his bravado, when he lost sight of things. When he forgot that they were a team, were supposed to work together and show care and respect.
Shouldn't it bother her that one of her closest friends just forgot these things?
She saw, in the expressions of both of the men before her, that Lilly hadn't used the name to call Orion back just now, but out of spite. With the intent to hurt. Yanking on that connection the two of them had like a leash. A connection rooted in a shared past that she wasn't part of, that she couldn’t possibly comprehend.
Poison held her breath. The room was silent, completely silent. Even the errant noises of Eliah's work had quieted, leaving only the sound of Poison’s own too-loud breath roaring in her head like a storm.
This was serious. It could decide whether they, as Hounds, continued or broke apart. Shattered. And it wasn't about any one of them any more. If the group broke apart, they'd scatter, anything else was far too dangerous right now.
Lilly was staring at his hands, shoulders slumped. Orion's face was an impassive mask.
Poison realized that she didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay. She didn't want to be alone again, all alone as before. She didn't want the ever present voice whispering doubt in her ear to be proven right. Again.
Lilly's shoulders slumped further. 'I'm sorry. I just... I can't stop, I have to do this.'
Orion nodded, expression softening just slightly. And just like that, the imminent threat of danger dissipated. He rubbed at his eyes. 'I understand. We'll manage.'
And that was that. Conflict resolved.
Poison felt suddenly very stupid. She clung to these guys after just two years. She felt as if her world was breaking apart because of a fight – and a pretty short one at that. She grasped frantically at her only friends in the world, friends of just two gods-damned years, and if that hold threatened to break she panicked. Wonderful.
Maybe the voice that told her to cut and run was right, and she was too deeply involved. Something this small shouldn't throw her off course. She shouldn't depend on the connection this much.
Anger rose inside her. Anger at herself, anger at Lilly, anger at this whole damn thing, this stupid fight, these stupid arguments.
'What's so fucking important about Michael anyway?'
She practically spat the name, and the others turned towards her in surprise. It angered her further, but this time the anger burned into her own stomach, pulling shame along with it. A fight like this, an exchange like this, and that was the first thing she said? The first opinion she threw in?
Orion's incredulous, almost indignant expression transformed into something of a scowl. He seemed about to snap at her when Lilly ran a weary hand over his eyes.
'We should tell her, I think. The whole story. Should have done it already.'
Orion's scowl dissipated in a second, reigned in by mild worry. He glanced back at Lilly, then nodded. 'Should I?' His voice was soft now, concerned. Poison could hardly follow the changes in his behaviour.
Lilly shook his head. 'I'll do it.'
He sighed, and his eyes met Poison's. Tired eyes. Resigned eyes. Poison felt bad for arguing, for making him explain himself, but she needed to hear the full story to form an opinion. And she needed to be included in this. She had cared far too little for Lilly's motivations up until now. It was time to hear what exactly she had been a part of for the past two years.
'As you know,' Lilly began, 'I met Orion five years ago. Before that, I had been studying mathematics and computer science at college. I met some people there, did a few things -'
Orion coughed something into his fist that sounded suspiciously like a name. Ethan?
Lilly ignored the interruption, '- and caught the attention of the Agency. I stayed away from my IT security classes and did a one-eighty towards pattern recognition software. I was invited to participate in a cross-faculty project studying brain activity. That's when I met Michael.'
'Okay, pause,' Poison interjected. 'You'll have to explain a bit more. I'm not that deep into the computer stuff.'
'Pattern recognition is basically what it sounds like. Machine learning. It's a part of AI.’
She stared at him blankly.
‘Computers learn by examples. You feed a program a few thousand random pictures of trees, then a few thousand random pictures with no trees in them, and tell the program which is which. The algorithm starts to learn what a tree is supposed to be, and tries to find the pattern in every new picture you give it. Basically. In theory. It's much more complex in practice.
'The project I was part of tried to recognize similarities in brain innervation to correlate to certain activities, personality traits, that kind of thing. You need more than a few thousand samples for that, a lot more, if you want any accuracy in predictions.'
Poison's head reeled a bit imagining the amount of data needed, and how to actually get it. You would need a lot of volunteers with quite the range of personality traits if you wanted to make any kind of assumption, she could guess that much. Plus, no two personalities were the same, so how were you supposed to find anything with any certainty at all? But she grasped the broad principle, so she nodded for Lilly to continue.
'I met Michael working on the project. He'd already been on it for a while, with a team handling the neurobiological side of things. Someone had to understand the science behind it and make hypotheses to test, us IT people just provided the algorithms to test them.
'Michael made some amazing discoveries, and we developed a basic modelling structure. The two of us became friends. I helped out on a few side projects. He brought me in on a government-funded study. I didn't know what it was about. That time I wrote the software and consulted Michael on characteristic patterns without ever being told what exactly we were working on. The data samples were scarce, and not very informative.'
'Well that doesn't sound shady at all.'
'I knew that when I signed the work contract, so I didn't pry. Michael would tell me no specifics, but he did talk about any developments the research made. In the end, he found something. It was big I guess, because he was all excited and said we'd made a leap forward and a bunch of neurological terms I didn't understand.
'A few days later, the initial bout of elation was gone. He got worried over something. Ever more often, he'd work nights and keep his results to himself, even from me. He became tight-lipped and skittish. When I asked what was going on, he evaded. I didn't know the other people on the project, so I couldn't ask if there was something wrong in general or just with Michael.
'In the end, I checked the data. He couldn't hide that from me, the software was mostly mine anyway. I just had to access the data samples and take a closer look at what the algorithm categorized.
'From what I'd picked up from our first project and a few papers, Michael had found some kind of correlation between activity patterns, and it made him nervous. I didn't have the scientific know-how to make sense of what exactly was going on, but it must have been important.
'Then, Michael started disappearing, for days at a time, without warning. He would just not show up for work. I got worried. Nobody else would talk to me. Nobody even acknowledged that there was something strange going on.
'So I turned to my old contacts and asked around and found an up-and-coming thief for hire.'
Orion grinned at that and gave a small bow with his head. 'That's how Lilly and I met. We looked into Michael, but didn't find much. No records of anything strange going on from the funders' side, either. Two weeks later, every trace of Michael was gone, research notes and all. Again, nobody knew of anything or even cared.'
'They gave me a new contract,' Lilly said, 'with much stricter regulations. I refused to sign and was off the project within a day. I struck up an agreement with Orion and dropped out of college to get to the bottom of the whole mess. That's how Hounds got started.'
Poison blew out a long breath. 'You've been looking for traces of Michael for five years. A scientist who used to work on a shady government project and disappeared. A guy getting ever more attention from ever more factions.' She chuckled. 'Quite the story. We could sell it as a movie script.'
Lilly smiled.
'One thing I’m curious about, though.' Poison leaned forward. 'What was the agreement?'
Orion leaned forward himself, grinning, back to his old mischievous self. Or almost back, if you ignored the flicker in his eyes, somewhere between coldness and fear. 'I was bored and Lilly offered an interesting chase. Plus his services for the search and any side jobs. I thought I could use a hacker with the right contacts. And if you got the Agency interested, you're not just a kid with too much free time. Lilly offered his cooperation until he found what he was looking for, or five years, whichever was going to be longer.'
Poison snorted softly. 'I guess it won't be the five years.'
'Yeah.' Lilly sighed theatrically. 'Well, I had to go on and become friends with Orion and find myself drawn back to hacking and all its pleasures, so now I have to actually enjoy my part of the agreement. Poor me.'
Orion picked up the game. 'And then we had to realize we needed more people for the job, and you joined, and it just got more fun.'
'Which led me to making friends and finding a home,' Poison chimed in. 'Whatever shall we do?'
They grinned at each other for a few seconds. We're not breaking apart, Poison chided herself softly, we're fine.
But there was one other thing she worried about. She had to ask, despite dreading the answer.
'So what happens after we find Michael?'
The guys grew still for a second, realizing the implications. If Hounds had formed to achieve one specific goal, what would happen when that goal was reached? Orion and she would probably keep on their lines of work, but Lilly could return to college. Finish his degree. Was that what he wanted?
Orion quickly broke the tension. 'We'll have to find another government conspiracy to unravel.'
'Yeah, there's gotta be more than one out there,' Lilly agreed. 'And that way, we're pretty much the good guys, right?'
Poison snorted. 'Ends justifying the means and such?'
Orion shook his head, the image of an exasperated parent. 'Because our moral standing is absolutely the most important thing in all this, sure. We'll just explain to the cops that we're technically the good guys, I'm sure they'll understand.'
'All right, good guys, what do we do?' Poison rubbed her hands. 'Quick hit or slow burn?'
'I think we can agree we're going to stay in the city,' Orion mused. 'But if we stay, and hit quick, Rivers is going to find us, sooner or later. And later won't be that far away. He's resourceful. On the other hand, lying completely low and just observing won't get us anywhere. We need a new lead, something to look for. We can't go digging into Dan Shio any more. The police station will be too well guarded to visit again. What else do we have?'
A few seconds of silence. Lilly sighed. ‘Yeah, I got nothing. We’ll have to go digging for clues again, I guess. It’s not like Michael is leaving any clues for us.’
‘It’s almost like he’s on the run and doesn’t want to be found,’ Orion deadpanned.
Poison frowned. ‘How did he manage to stay free for five years? It’s not like he’s an expert on avoiding the government, and they tend to be very good at their job.’
Lilly shrugged. ‘No idea. Maybe he hasn’t been on the run for the whole time. Maybe he escaped only recently. But they’re looking for him now, so he must be somewhere in the city. And we have to find him before anyone else does.’
An unwelcome thought crawled to the front of Poison’s awareness. It whispered in her mind, trying to convince her to speak it out loud. The doubt returned, the fear that she would say the wrong thing and make the guys mad.
She scowled at her insecurity and decided to speak her thoughts before she could consider them further. ‘Why are you so intent on finding Michael? Sure, he made some crazy discoveries and you used to work together, but five years of work and going against Max Rivers? That’s got to be one hell of a friendship.’
The door leading from the workshop through to the bar banged open and recoiled noisily against the wall. The three of them flinched and Orion half-stood, ready to bolt.
Eliah came skidding around the corner of a shelf and practically launched herself at Lilly, burying her face in his chest. She didn't make a sound, but her shoulders were heaving.
Lilly closed his arms around her carefully, asking a whispered question. She mumbled something in return,and Lilly pulled her closer, face going white with shock.
Poison felt cold dread crawl up from her stomach and clamp around her throat. Lilly confirmed her fears.
'Yoshua's gone.'