by W. J. May
“Run me through it again?” he asked. “From start to finish.”
Jason picked up the case file and dropped it between them. “He got to Hungary approximately six weeks ago—undercover as an expatriate on his way home. His objective was to integrate himself with a local cartel long enough to find out when they were making a huge drop-off here in London. At that point, he was to deliver the information and return to Guilder for debrief.”
Simon discarded his remaining clothes and settled on the bed beside them. “A drop-off? A drop-off of what?”
“Guns,” Jason said without blinking. “In exchange for a certain amount of anonymity from the British government, the Privy Council, on occasion, lends their services delivering targets that are deemed too volatile for the regular police. This cartel is one of them.”
Tristan nodded dismissively but Simon stared at Jason, shocked. There were people inside the British government who knew about the Privy Council? Who knew what they all were? When the hell did that happen?! Did those people have tatùs as well, or—
“The only problem with the assignment was that the guy in charge, a man named Tóth, didn’t trust the men in his own crew. By all accounts Jacob charmed him, but Tóth refused to decide the precise date and location of the drop until the very last minute, in case there was a rat in his crew. As such, Jacob’s week-long assignment stretched into something closer to two months.”
“So what happened?” Tristan asked quietly. “What went wrong?” His hands were clenched tightly into fists, and he struggled to make his voice calm.
In their last months together at Guilder, both he and Simon had grown very close with Jacob. Out of every other person in their class, Jacob was something of a kindred spirit. The only one up to their level, and the only one they actually enjoyed spending time with. The three of them had spent many nights together, wandering the banks of the Thames with a bottle of wine, discussing random philosophies and ideas as to how to make their world a better one. After the suicide of his brother, Jacob had gotten firmly on board with the HOC and all its principles. While the club had unofficially disbanded once they all left school, those principles remained...as did those who believed in them.
“Jacob never showed up at the final meet,” Jason answered simply. “Tóth had been leaving hints that it was almost time to leave. The entire crew was supposed to meet up at the Aria Hotel in Budapest to receive their final instructions. Jacob wasn’t there.”
“How do you know for sure?” Tristan asked sharply. He wasn’t the same scared boy who had been sent to Munich all those months ago. A year of working in the field had hardened him, taught him to ask questions and see patterns where he wouldn’t have before. “Maybe he did show up, but he never left because Tóth found him out. Did anyone ever consider that?”
He was angry, and Simon didn’t blame him. The Privy Council sent out agents in pairs for a reason. So that things like this didn’t happen.
Jason’s eyes tightened painfully, but he pushed to his feet. “That’s exactly what the two of you are supposed to find out. Go to Budapest. Stay in Jacob’s flat. See who shows up to find him. Find him first.” He tossed them a pair of new passports. “Do what you do best.” He swept out of the room without another word. Since Jacob’s rather rocky introduction into both Guilder and the PC, Jason had grown rather protective of him. Simon suspected it was taking every bit of self-control he had in him not to hop on a plane and fly to Budapest himself.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tristan mumbled under his breath. Simon turned around, and he held up his passport with a wry grin. “Harold Mumpkins.”
A burst of laughter escaped Simon’s lips in spite of himself, and he picked up his own. Sure enough. “Gerome Peaches.”
Tristan shook his head with an exasperated smile. “This is all because we gave Keene a hard time about his cat?”
“Probably.”
They were both silent for a moment, staring down at the letter, then Tristan looked up with sudden determination. “Well, Peaches, then there’s just one question left to ask.”
Simon met his gaze and nodded firmly. They weren’t helpless in this scenario, after all. They were a pair of highly-trained operatives who were being sent in to find their missing friend.
And not to boast, but given the fact that it was them going...they liked Jacob’s odds.
“Window or aisle?”
SIMON CHOSE THE WINDOW. He got the aisle. Since he and Tristan had first started working together, Tristan was somehow always able to maneuver it so that he got the better seat. At this point, Simon hardly expected anything different.
He glanced over at his friend, passed out against the little window of glass, and noiselessly stole and finished his complimentary glass of Champagne. Simon’s own glass was already empty.
He’d hoped it would help him sleep. They were in for a rocky couple of days, and he was going to need all his wits about him if they were going to figure this thing out. But no matter what he tried, he wasn’t able to get himself there. Every time he closed his eyes a certain face floated into view, eyes twinkling and smile sinister.
C.
Simon had met with Cromfield again last night, sneaking out of the house just hours before he was supposed to get on the plane. Turns out Tristan had been right about him favoring the room with the view of the park. It made it easier to leap lightly from the balcony before darting into the shadowy trees.
But they didn’t stay in the park. Despite Simon being tragically pressed for time, the two of them headed over to St. Stephen’s Church. Or rather, to the hidden catacombs beneath.
A belated shudder ran through Simon’s arms as he remembered going down there for the first time. It felt like one of those moments in a movie, where the character opens the darkened basement door and peers down the steps. Everyone in the audience is shouting in unison. “Don’t go in there!” If he does, he’s a complete idiot. All the signs are pointing to run away. But he goes in anyway. And inevitably something bad happens.
Well, a lot of bad things had happened. They just hadn’t happened to Simon.
Last night he and Cromfield had wound their way down the damp tunnels, using only a blunted torch to guide their way. The moans and wails of a hundred imprisoned people rang loudly in his ears, and he wished that he could turn off Tristan’s tatù. But just as it was getting to be too much to take a door opened suddenly on their left, and Simon found himself in a familiar room.
“What about the new hybrid?” he asked softly. He’d thought he was going there tonight to see the man to find out the reason for all the commotion.
Cromfield put a heavy hand on his shoulder. A seemingly friendly gesture, but one that made Simon shiver all the same. “All in good time. He’s still being processed. A little tougher to break than the others. But that’s not why I asked you here. I asked you here...because it seems our pet scientist had a bit of a break-through.”
He flipped on the light, revealing a man trembling in the corner. A man whose wrists and ankles were chained and bolted to the wall. He cringed when the two men walked in but made no move to protect himself as Cromfield paced forward and undid the bolts, giving him a few feet of leash. He seemed resigned to the fact that if he was ever to get out of this bleak dungeon, it would not be while he was alive to see it.
“Dr. McAllister,” Cromfield greeted him cheerfully. “I was just telling our young friend here about your progress. Perhaps you’d like to fill him in on the details?”
McAllister shivered again and gazed up at Simon. His eyes seemed to be having trouble focusing, and what looked like permanent bruises were painted in the hollows of his cheeks. All in all, he looked like a man who had neither slept nor seen sunlight for several months.
“Y-yes.” He took several shaky steps towards the table in the center of the room, the only piece of furniture he was allowed. “I believe I’ve found a balance in the serum, allowing it to manipulate the neuro-pathways to the point of rendering
a clean slate.”
Cromfield nudged Simon in a friendly sort of way. “A blank canvas on which we can impart our message.”
The doctor nodded quickly, or perhaps he was merely trembling that hard. “The message itself is another problem altogether but I believe that I can at least remove a person’s memories past a certain point, giving us free rein to rewrite the timespan as we see fit.”
Cromfield raised his eyebrows dangerously. “We, doctor?”
McAllister paled. “You. I meant you. The two of you.”
Cromfield nodded sharply and turned back to Simon. “You remember the hybrid we brought in several months ago? A mixed bag of telekinesis and photon-manipulation? The combination of which was rather potent?”
Simon nodded quickly. Of course he remembered her. She had almost taken his head off in a ray of blinding light when he’d showed up at her apartment. It was only thanks to Jason’s tatù that he’d been able to dodge the blast and inject her with the sedative. She was still vowing to rip him to pieces when they carted her away.
Cromfield smiled. “Meet Jill.”
The door opened and Simon took a hasty step back. He was expecting the gurney. All the experiments were wheeled around half-sedated on gurneys. It was simply too dangerous to allow them to move of their own volition. He cocked his head, waiting for the telltale sound of rusted wheels squeaking on the linoleum.
He heard footsteps instead.
A woman swept suddenly into the room. Hair combed. Fully dressed. Looking as though she had been shopping up on the London streets and had merely ducked down into the catacombs for a quick chat.
Simon’s mouth fell open as she turned to him and smiled.
“This is him?” she asked Cromfield. “The man you wanted me to meet?”
Cromfield glanced twice between her and Simon, his eyes sparkling. “Yes, my dear. This is Simon. He was the one who found you wandering near the Guilder campus. From the looks of things, the Council did quite a number on you before he was able to get you out.”
Simon’s eyes widened as his feet froze to the ground.
The Guilder campus? The Council did quite a number on her? What the hell was going on?
Then she threw her arms around him, and all the air rushed from his body in one loud breath.
“Thank you,” she murmured, squeezing tighter around his back. “Thank you for getting me out of there. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
Simon couldn’t believe it. Could scarcely breathe. His eyes locked with Cromfield’s, and for a moment the cheerful grandfatherly façade fell away. The man was staring at the two of them, with nothing short of sinister delight. Waves of evil practically radiated off of him, and for a split second Simon was happy the woman was standing between them as a shield.
When she finally pulled away, it was all he could do to force himself to smile. “It’s really no problem. You should be more careful,” he added convincingly. “What with a power like yours.”
Cromfield swept towards them from across the room. “And on that note, there actually is something you can do to repay Simon. To repay the both of us...”
What proceeded was one of the most morally-convoluted ‘science experiments’ Simon had ever seen. While it was possible to force people to use their abilities for study, it was another thing entirely to test the boundaries of a willing subject. The sheer fire-power there was incredible, and he’d slipped back into his window the next morning feeling elated with the thrill of the unknown.
They were going to do something great, down there in those catacombs. Something that would last through the ages.
Of course, now that he was sitting back on the plane with nothing to do and nothing to distract himself, those ethical lines he had crossed hardened back into sharp reality.
It had always been the same. Each day for the last year. Each time he’d gone down to study and work with Cromfield beneath the church. He was interested in the results of the experiments, he was astounded with some of the information they had gathered...but he didn’t want to know the logistics of what Cromfield was actually doing. He’d seen enough bits for himself, enough glimpses behind the curtain to get a pretty good idea for himself. A ‘pretty good idea’ was enough.
But try as he might there were certain things that, once seen, could never be erased. There were certain questions permanently imbedded in his head. Questions he was afraid to answer.
Like where that little blond kid came from, and where his parents were. The kid could only be about four or five years old. How was it that he’d somehow been doomed to spend the entirety of his young life wandering around in a dungeon?
Or what happened to the men and women they experimented upon once Cromfield decided he’d gotten all the information he needed from them. Cromfield had been gathering DNA samples from each one—a catalogue of their powers, he said. What was happening to the samples? How was it that, although they kept on taking people into the limited space beneath the church, there always happened to be a free cell available when they needed it?
And what of Cromfield himself? Why had he picked Simon? Showed up at the motel in Munich that day just in time to save his life? Why had he written that fateful letter on Simon’s hand and not Tristan’s, who was lying right at his side?
Even as the questions were whirling through his head, Beth’s face floated suddenly to the forefront and his heart tightened. He could never picture them together. Her and Cromfield. It was as if the two of them simply couldn’t exist side-by-side. It was an unsustainable system, what he’d been doing. This double life. There had been a tension mounting for the better part of a year. A tension under which one of those two lives had to break.
Simon just didn’t know which one it was going to be.
With a conscious effort, he put those dark thoughts away and turned to Tristan instead. It was an easy escape, living and working with his best friend. One that he’d turned to many, many times before. Simon might have done terrible things in the past, and his future might be unsure, but Tristan was immediately present. They spent almost every second together travelling around the world, saving it from its own stupidities. It was easy to avoid thinking of such troubling future hypotheticals when he could submerge himself in a new adventure every day.
“Hey,” he nudged him gently, “wake up.”
Tristan didn’t move. The nudges grew insistent.
“Wake up.”
First one eye squinted open. Then another. After a second, they both focused on Simon with a soft groan. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t sleep.”
Tristan blinked for a second more before his face hardened into a scowl. “That sucks. But I can. Let me.” He lay his head back against the window but Simon jerked him upright, completely absorbed in his own little world.
“I’m wondering if I shouldn’t have taken Jason’s tatù after all,” he murmured, ignoring Tristan’s murderous face while he babbled on obliviously. “Do you remember Reedus? That new guy. The one with the ability to conjure? It’s just in its preliminary stages, but holy hell, wouldn’t that be incredible!”
“Simon, seriously.” Tristan tried to reclaim his arm as he gazed longingly at his pillow. “Just close your eyes and—”
“Jason’s ability won’t cut it. Not for this,” Simon continued, gazing off into the distance as he made his plans. “I don’t need to be fast, I need to be thorough. Actually,” he grabbed Tristan’s bare wrist just as he was settling back down, “I guess I should just take yours instead.”
“For shit’s sake, Simon!” Tristan jerked away painfully, shaking out his arm like he could literally discard the burn. “How many times do I have to—”
“Is there a problem?”
Both boys lifted their heads to see a flight attendant gazing down at them curiously. She had been staring ever since they got on board and settled in first class, and had been discreetly watching them ever since. While Simon noticed every detail, Tristan remained p
redictably oblivious.
“Yeah,” he scowled, “can you get my friend a soda or something? Maybe a tranquilizer? He can’t sleep.”
The woman laughed nervously. “I’m not sure it matters now. We’ll be landing in just a few minutes anyway.” She squeezed Simon’s shoulder discreetly before moving down the aisle. “Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Simon stared after her with a smirk, while Tristan gazed sleeplessly out the window.
“Great. Just great.”
DESPITE HOW MANY COUNTIES they’d travelled to over the last year, Simon had actually never been to Hungary. Tristan had been once with his parents on vacation, so he was far less interested in the flashing lights and ancient architecture than Simon. Several times, he had to grab his friend’s arm to avoid him getting distractedly hit by a bus or an angry cab as he gazed around in wonder. It wasn’t until they’d finally climbed into a cab themselves that Tristan released him.
“It’s like travelling around with a toddler,” he mumbled, slipping the cabbie some money as he scribbled down the address. “I should get one of those little leashes to attach around your wrist.”
“What is this river?” Simon asked, tuning out his friend’s criticisms as he pressed his face against the window to get a better look.
Tristan glanced up before returning his eyes to his phone. “It’s the Danube.”
Simon’s eyes danced with the lights of the riverboats, making all sorts of after-the-mission plans, before he turned disapprovingly back to his friend. “Would you put that away? We’re in freaking Budapest, man! Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“It’s Mary,” Tristan muttered, fingers flying over the buttons. “She’s worried about me going away again after the other day.”
Simon frowned curiously. “What happened the other...” His mind flashed back to the giant vault break-in, to Tristan sprinting over a hundred feet into the air before falling back repeatedly to the ground. He scoffed dismissively. “You didn’t get that hurt. It was just your wrist, right?”