“When I see you,” Aiden seethed, “I’m going to tear your head from your shoulders then gut you using the same sword you used on my girlfriend!”
“Someone flipped the kill switch,” he muttered before his face brightened up in a wide smile. “You do have permission to kill me–”
“I don’t need your permission to do jack shit!”
“–However, if you want to get your girlfriend back, you and I are going to have to play nice. Isn’t teamwork a popular word you humans like to use in your places of occupation? As in, there’s no I in team, or rather, there is no Jin being Jin ever again without a little cooperation?”
Key narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?” He looked around the Cobra Causatum chamber then to George. “What’s going on? What does he mean cooperation?”
“Well,” George started.
“No,” Ahn said, his voice stern. “I never ask others to explain anything for me. My plan, my explanation, my consequences. After that you can decide to like me, forgive me or hate me, I don’t care. But this plan hinges on us being on one page.”
Key was still confused, and he was sure it showed. “I don’t understand. All of this is happening because of you.”
Ahn gave Key a pointed look. “You know that is not true.” Ahn descended the short set of steps to the bottom floor. He grabbed an empty chair, rolled it in front of the comm-link camera and took a seat.
“This won’t take long.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Ahn looked over a series of faces, all of them exhibiting an array of emotions. He was most interested in two. The first was Aiden’s.
He understood Aiden’s anger, of course. He would have to be an idiot to not understand why this man wanted him dead and he wasn’t sure if anything he was about to say would change that.
The second was Rooke.
Rooke was one, if not the most brilliant Mutare youths he knew. Ahn was fascinated by his knowledge and astounded by his ability to do so many things. He’d seen him rewire an entire infrastructure in seconds. He’d seen him hack into a mainframe no one should have access to. He watched him rise through rank with a speed that surprised him.
He’d also seen him lie.
Rooke was an excellent liar. One of the best.
“Rooke.” The young Mutare stood and looked at him. “Detego.”
Rooke’s head snapped towards his. His frown was deep and the uncertainty was clear in his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Ahn nodded. “Your mother says it is time.”
Rooke stared at him for a long yawning, silent moment and Ahn held him to that gaze. He needed Rooke to know he was serious, that this was serious. When the moment was over and the silence broke, he could see the wall dropping behind the young Mutare’s brown eyes. He watched his transformation from Rooke… to his real identity, Adalberto.
“I accept your command.” Moving almost mechanically, efficiently, Rooke pulled out another laptop, the one with the angel on the back, lifted it above his head and smashed it to the ground.
“Kid,” Jon asked, his hands hovering in the air as if Rooke was a bull and he was wearing all red. “What the hell are you doing?”
Rooke sighed and continued with his task. From the rubble of wires and broken plastic, sharp angles of his screen, he withdrew a single crystalline shaped USB. On its surface was the word “DETAGO”. Ahn couldn’t see that from where he sat, but he knew what it said. He was the one who had the word engraved into the crystal. He was the one who gave it to him.
“Kithlish,” Ahn said, “this is probably a really shitty preface to what I’m about to tell you, but I’m glad you’re a little weak.”
“Because?” Key replied, his voice full of apprehension.
“Because,” Ahn continued “you’ve always had problems trusting me, and know you will always have a problem trusting me. I’m a secretive bastard. Hugo learned everything from me and look at him. He’s incorrigible. It’s an unfortunate flaw I have.”
Key raised a brow. “There’s a point to this pity party, right?”
Ahn sighed. “Yes.” He glanced at Rooke. “Go ahead.”
Rooke took the USB and walked it to the computer interface. Pushing back a small compartment door just above the monitor, he shoved the port into a slot until it clicked. The tip of the USB turned a brilliant shade of blue, then white. Satisfied, Rooke stepped back. Light poured from the compartment, shining through the crystal and broadcasting a picture on the golden barrier like it was a projector screen.
The image was a picture of Penume, Rooke, and Ahn from a grainy surveillance feed. They were standing outside of an office building speaking with a woman. At her side was a young girl with a head full of braids and a polka dotted romper. She was more concerned with her brick-style cell phone than her mother’s guests.
“That’s…that’s Jin’s mother,” Aiden choked. “And…that’s Jin.”
Heads snapped towards Aiden. Tahir looked back at the screen then back to him. “Are you certain?”
“Yes!” Aiden exclaimed. He walked up to the projector and pointed to Jin. “She’s a teenager here, but look at her. That’s Jin! Her mother is a business consultant and this is the Charleston branch where she works,” he said. “I know because I’ve seen pictures before.” Aiden turned to Rooke. “Why do you have this?”
“And what is Rooke doing there?” Tahir asked.
“He was working,” Ahn said with irritating simplicity.
“On what,” she said between clenched teeth. “I know Rooke, okay. I can tell you every haircut he’s had since he entered MATE. A Mohawk. He came into MATE with a goddamn Mohawk! This,” she said, pointing to the screen, “was before he was accepted into MATE. So explain to me how the hell he was working.”
“You’re correct. This was before his acceptance into MATE. It was on the day of his graduation that he began his career for Caeli. Officially. Unofficially, he was working for me prior to that date. Unofficially, he still works for me.”
“What does that mean?” Key asked slowly as if Ahn was speaking some backwater Caelian slang instead of a very uncomfortable truth, his face hard and controlled. Ahn could see the tick on his cheek. He was furious.
“I can’t be any clearer, Kithlish.”
Tahir rounded on Rooke, her face colored with surprise and hurt. “Is that…is that true, Rooke?”
Rooke answered her by falling into Mutare military stance, his face as still as stone, unblinking.
“I can imagine the turmoil you’re feeling but Rooke is not the reason I showed you this picture. As Aiden pointed out, that is Jin Amaris, age thirteen with her mother. Anybody want to tell me what that means?”
It was silent in the wake of Ahn’s question. That is until Key cursed. “No fucking way.”
Ahn hummed, then smiled.
“You’ve known. You’ve known all along. About Aria, about Jin.”
“All along is a stretch but…yes. Although I can’t claim to have foreknowledge about her death. That was a surprise. I knew she was alive and I knew what she possessed. The plan to free Aria was always the plan. Her maniac ex-boyfriend killing Jin was not. It put a kink in our plan that’s for sure because as soon as he did, all of Caeli knew about her.”
“A kink in your plan,” Aiden said lowly. “Jin is a person, not some tangle in your stupid strings!”
“I know that Aiden. Trust me, I do.”
“You said ‘our plan.’” Key glanced at Rooke. “There’s no way you were a part of that, too.”
Ahn chuckled. “I’m manipulative, but I’m so much of an asshole to put Rooke in that position. Rooke simply kept me abreast of certain things that at first only a civilian could, then only a cadet could, then things only a seated officer could. Finally, when I had him placed with Fox–Parker really is gullible–things that only a Captain would know. Don’t blame him. Rooke was involved as a familial obligation to his mother.”
“This is madness,” Tahir muttered, her head shakin
g.
Ahn agreed. “It is. So to answer your question, when I said our plan, I meant Penume and I. When Aria gained awareness, she joined in, too.”
“The leech?” Jon asked from Key’s side.
Ahn tilted his head to the side. “The what?”
Key studiously ignore both questions. “I want to make sure I’m hearing this right. You discovered Aria when Jin was a child. Before any of us could, even before Pythia Phi, even before…” Key’s eyes slid closed and a hand came to rub his face. “Penume,” he stated as his eyes drifted back to the projector screen. “The only angel strong enough to do that would have been Penume. She is the one who created the spirit essence registry. She is able to identify every single spirit essence not blocked by a clog. She would have felt Aria way before anyone else would have.”
“You’re a very intelligent angel, Key,” Ahn said, his voice heavy with admiration. “And yes, you’re right. Penume discovered Aria’s existence the night Jin was born. I found out later. She was able to pick up Aria’s existence even with Jin’s soul shrouding most of her spiritual mass.”
“None of that explains why you are helping after you got what you wanted,” Aiden seethed, apparently still angry.
Ahn leaned forward in his chair. “Did I get what I wanted? Is Caeli safe? No. I simply acquired us a tilt in probability. There are so many variables that must be thought about, Aiden. For instance, Hugo has Marcus and Spencer sending us intel on the Eleven since we don’t have a Jerome hide and go seek contest to win anymore.”
Jerome rolled his eyes.
“We still have to prepare for War. We barely, and I stress this, barely beat Shemhazi’s rebellion. No offense, Shem,” Ahn said as he looked apologetically to the Elder angel.
“None taken,” the older man said, shrugging. “That sounded like a compliment to me.”
“I don’t get it,” Jon said. “If it’s just eleven of them, they can’t possibly be as powerful as you guys are saying,”
“That’s our cue,” Hugo said. Jerome nodded and began tapping from his console, not stopping until the contents of a file replaced the picture on the screen. In the bottom right-hand corner were two comm-link boxes, one showing Spencer’s gummy smile and the other Marcus’s grim frown, his hat tipped lazily to the side.
“The Eleven is an informal title,” Spencer explained. “As is “Shemhazi’s Rebels” or “Azeal’s Revolt”. The War was actually called Titanomachy and the true name of Shemhazi’s rebel force was–”
“Glut,” George interjected. “We were named after a tidal wave named Gluttony that struck Elysian once shortly after Caeli was formed. Those who lived through it remember it being endless, that it seemed like the waves just kept coming and coming and coming. That’s how numerous we were. The Eleven was what was left of Glut and had defected to Earth. The name Eleven should not be used as a sort of roll call.”
“He’s right,” Marcus continued. “The power of the current Eleven is threefold. One, Glut has been reborn and their numbers far, far exceed their previous ones.”
Tahir choked on air. Rooke was at her side, patting her on the back, instinctively. She eventually caught her breath, but pulled away from Rooke, almost violently. Rooke seemed to have realized what he’d done, “Rooke” bleeding through Adalberto’s façade or Adalberto’s trained personality losing to who Rooke really was, and moved back towards the wall, his head down.
“Two,” Spencer said, picking up where Marcus left off, “The Eleven contain some of Caeli’s strongest entities. Their leaders, Lucan or his formal name, Azrael no Semjâzâ, and Pythia Del, former Head Priestess of Tambour, were two of the strongest. Lucan was a former Astral bodyguard, and Del, is a very skilled spiritualist, second to none other than Penume and Onyu del Tanzanique.”
“Please tell me you guys have a plan,” Jon said, rather pathetically.
“Working on it,” Hugo said. “But let us worry about that. There is a reason why Cobra signed up for this plan of Ahn’s. Saving both Jin and Aria is very important to this war.”
Aiden scoffed. “Then why did you let the asshole stab her?”
“We didn’t. If you remember, we are the ones who stopped Ahn. It wasn’t until after his arrest did he let us in on this.”
“I told you. I’m not one to let those who help me suffer. Jin Amaris, whether she wanted to or not, has helped me greatly. For that, I will not let her suffer, either.”
“What do you plan on doing about that? I figured you were taking so long because this has never happened before?” Jon asked.
“It hasn’t. But, as I’ve said before, I am an uncouth manipulator and liar. What you guys don’t know is that the demarcation event happened already, naturally, organically.”
Key pulled his chin in and blinked slowly. “What do you mean it already happened? It wasn’t supposed to happen for weeks! And what the hell is organically? A demarcation event is a technical task. It required computers and monitors and specialists. It can’t happen organically. There is no natural way to go about it.”
“An exorcism is an exorcism and works as an exorcism, even without all of our fancy gadgets monitoring everything. Except when you have a spiritualist as strong as Penume, you can perform the exorcism while sending the soul away from Caeli. I didn’t want Jin to end up in a storage facility while they made up their mind about what to do with her. Not when they don’t understand that a fragment of Aria’s soul is still with Jin.”
“Which means, if discovered, she is still a threat to The Eleven and Glut, but an asset to us.” Key turned to Ahn. “You’re an asshole but you’re a brilliant asshole.”
Ahn held his hand up. “Oh, that one wasn’t on me.”
“No?”
Ahn shook his head. “Penume may have a soft spot the size of Jupiter for Rooke, but she has one the size of the sun for Aria. Every version of her.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Sono Hospital, Syncrorate Ward
Elysian Territory, Caelian Realm
Penume often had trouble searching for words that described her feelings as a co de-facto leader of The Fallen, sufficiently anyways. She’d fallen, like some ironic move by The Creator, into the position because it was deserved. If angels had resumes like humans did, hers would read like a Rhode Scholar–Root Watcher, Dialect, Third Order spiritualist, and member of The Fallen. She felt like her designation as a leader of The Fallen was a natural thing. She still didn’t think it was the best decision.
Penume didn’t utilize the power her position gave her in the ways that people thought she should. As a leader, she was a figurehead–Kano was their true one–so she stayed out of Kano’s way. That didn’t mean she was
powerless. She just had different goals.
“You should be able to walk now, Aria. Try it,” Sunny instructed into an intercom panel from her seat behind a clear observation glass. The lower panel of the observation console broadcasted Aria’s vitals, glowing orange and steady. She released the intercom button and turned to Penume. “No entiendo,” Sunny marveled as she pushed her white hair off her dark forehead. “How did Aria managed to jimmy her soul free without a demarcation event? She must have been awfully determined.”
Penume shrugged. “What percentage is she synched with her new body?”
Sunny looked down at the lower panel. “Seventy-two percent and rising. She should be completely stabilized in an hour, tops.”
“She’s passed the syncrorate threshold which means visitors will start showing up and I won’t be able to stop them. They’ll try to put her to work as soon as possible but I think she needs her rest. It takes so much for a soul to attach to a body.”
“Good thing she has the Director of Sono babysitting her, huh?” Sunny grinned and Penume shook her head at Sunny’s boast. She was the best healer in all three territories. Key’s father was second but the power of a lineal gift would never surpass the raw power passed down from angel to angel.
“Thank you for looking out after he
r, Sunny. I’m going to go talk to her for a moment.”
Sunny hummed in answer but when Penume grabbed the door handle that would lead her into Aria’s observation room, Sunny wrapped a hand around her wrist, her palm warm and calloused. With a slight tug, she pulled Penume between her legs and placed her hands on her hips, an act Penume recognized as territorial, but affectionate. “I’ve known you for a very long time, Penume,” she said and began to sway Penume gently.
“Oh, it’s just Penume, now?” she asked, gazing down into Sunny’s enchanting hazel eyes.
“It is when you’re hiding something, mi alma, and I know you are.”
Penume slid her hands up Sunny’s arms and to her neck, resting them there. Penume bent forward and placed her forehead against Sunny’s, greeting her again, this time not as subordinate, but as a lover.
She loved how they contrasted–Penume’s pale, freckled complexion to Sunny’s deep brown one. Even their eyes were opposites. Penume’s eyes were a circle of the darkest black, while Sunny’s eyes were crystalline and bright with flecks of gold. Penume was loud and abrasive, Sunny was thoughtful and observant. Penume never met her mother, while Sunny and her mother spent numerous rest cycles in Pájaros where her father’s descendants still lived. It’s where her mother fled with Sunny in tow during Titanomachy. Sunny wore her greys, Penume wore her black and gold. Penume followed the rules because she had to; Sunny followed them because she believed in them.
“You’ve known me long enough to know when I’m hiding something and you’ve also known me long enough to know I can’t tell you.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 25