by Katie Vack
But still, that could not be the case. The Boss wouldn't send anybody after him until after he had outlived his usefulness- until then, to do so would just be putting himself in the firing line with his superiors. Of course, it might be that he the Boss didn't want to have him killed but simply forced to suffer, in which case this was still a possibility. But no, things simply didn't add up. Circumstances considered, that wouldn't make any sense.
The people yesterday had all been the same species. A group of thrown-together heavies wouldn't have shared that trait. Therefore, the most likely explanation was that they had been going for the koto. It seemed obvious now that he thought about it. The table with the koto was the one place in the restaurant that had never been shot at. He had already assessed them to be persons of influence, anyway- and if that was the case, the koto must have been taken alive, at least to begin with. Sure, he'd seen them stabbed, but he hadn't been able to pay an incredible amount of attention in the midst of the battle. It might be that not all the koto had been required.
Either way, it was a political attack, and whether or not it had been the goal this political attack had been directed against the Universal Alliance. That was never a good move. In fact, there were very few decisions which would have been more ill-advised.
Nobody should be stupid enough to go against the UA, not unless they had a few billion soldiers to fight for them and an impregnable fortress to hide within. These people, he knew, had neither. They didn't have a hope in hell now that they'd crossed that line. They would be hunted down, rooted out, and summarily executed. Really, all he had to do was wait.
The problem with that idea was that he didn't know whether he could afford to. It might be a few hours until the cavalry arrived, it might be a few days, or it might be a week. That was all well and good, but he wasn't even sure that his captors were going to look after him. For all he knew they had thrown him in here to forget, and within a few days he'd be dead of dehydration.
He could not allow that. He still wasn't done here; there was still too much he had yet to do. But then, at the same time there was nothing he could do to stop it. He considered jumping to his feet, screaming his head off, and hammering his fists against the door, but he knew it would be futile. Even if somebody did hear they wouldn't come to talk to him. They wouldn't come here until they were ordered to do so.
There was nothing he could do. It was infuriating, and demoralising, but that nothing more. In the end, he simply slumped his head back down into his coat. It wasn't like he had anything better ideas.
* * *
After what seemed like days, but had probably just been hours, there came the sound of echoing footsteps. He sat up, suddenly alert and in a foul mood to boot, and then the footsteps stopped outside his door. Somebody beat on it and summoned him.
"Yeah," he got to his feet and found himself looking through the bars at the girl he'd seen during the fight, the older one who'd been in charge of the trio. "What?"
"Get on your knees, put your hands on your head."
He considered ignoring her instructions, but decided it wasn't worth the effort. He had no power in this current situation, and trying to free himself with no foothold would be stupid. At best they'd leave him here until he was more compliant, at worst he'd be beaten or killed. He knelt down slowly, placing his hands on the back of his head.
The cell door opened and the girl walked in, followed by the loner he'd fought and another of yesterday's trio. The two followers were carrying beaten up shotguns which they kept pointed at his centre of mass, putting paid to any thoughts he had of escape. Against the girl alone he could have managed it, but not now, from this position and with two firearms pointed at his chest.
He glanced over at the loner, smirking despite himself as he reminisced over the recent events. "You fight like a girl."
The boy stepped out of sight through a rift and Grayson found himself struck in the small of the back, winding up face down on the floor, his skull impacting against it and stunning him. "And you," came the voice from behind him, "crawl like a worm."
His hands were grabbed roughly and he cried out from the pain, then there was the feeling of cold metal encircling his wrists. A couple of clicks told him he'd just been handcuffed. Someone grabbed him by the hair, lifting him to his feet.
The girl stood in front of him. "You've just been given a second chance. Count yourself lucky. Piss us off any more, and we'll retract that chance. Try anything stupid, and we'll have your head."
"And how, darling, would you define stupid?"
He saw the slap coming but did nothing to avoid it. It struck him across the side of his head, hitting with surprising force, and snapped his head around, setting of fresh explosions within his skull.
He grimaced. "I guess that counts as an answer."
She didn't stoop to reply to his jabs. "Piss me off any more, and you die painfully. Now walk."
He was shoved from behind and stumbled through the doorway into a suitably menacing corridor. It didn't look like the place had become a group until these people took over, but it had definitely been something morbid. It just had that atmosphere of fatalistic resignation and dreary despair. He decided it was best to set off walking.
Interestingly, and a superb example of how amateurish this group was, his cuffs weren't dampening his powers in any way. Sure, he had never used them during the fight so they might have mistaken him for powerless, but this was still a big mistake. He had his shadows, and he could fight with his feet. If push came to shove, he wouldn't be quite as defenceless as they'd be expecting him to be.
He kept walking down the corridor, the young one leading the way as the loner and the girl took up the rear. "You're about to meet our leaders," the girl continued, "You will show them respect. You will not be allowed to mock or insult them. Doing so will only make things worse for yourself. Try to escape and we will kill you."
"What is it with you guys? On the one hand you tell me you're offering me a chance, on the other you threaten me with death if I run. How bad could this 'offer' of yours really be?"
"That's not for me to say."
"Well then," he went on, "who are you, at least? Because this has to be one of the worst examples of a coup that I've ever seen."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course not. But still, what are you really after here? I understand you wanted the koto, but for what purpose? How could it justify bringing the wrath of the Alliance upon yourselves?"
Something struck him over the back of the head and he fell, only to be dragged back to his feet and shoved forwards again. "No more questions. No more cheek, unless you really have a death wish."
After that, he kept his mouth shut. They continued the walk in silence for perhaps thirty seconds, until they reached a pair of embellished doors. A couple of guards stood outside, armed with heavy metal clubs. A real pair of bodyguards, he thought sarcastically. If not for the predicament he was in, this whole thing would have been hilarious.
The young one was admitted through, presumably to tell their leader that he was here. "We've arrived," the girl stated rather redundantly.
"Really?" He turned to her, speaking as caustically and patronisingly as possible- which, given his talent, was very. "What gave it away? The doors? The guards?"
She didn't reply, simply punching him once in the stomach, then again, then again, then when he still didn't double over, smashing him across the jaw. She stumbled backwards clutching her fist, half-masked pain creasing her face, and he grinned. You didn't throw a punch against someone unless you knew how to do so, especially not against a hard target. For all her tough talk, she was just another amateur.
The loner stepped forward angrily, looking to finish the job, but then the doors opened and the young one poked his head around. "Our leaders will see you now."
"Oh, good, and I was just starting to get bored." Grayson bounded through the door, heavily downplaying his injuries in an attempt to appear st
aunch. He reckoned it worked. Probably.
He strode into a Spartan hall, furnished by nothing but a couple of high backed chairs at the far end, a half dozen metres away from him. In the two chairs sat a man and a woman. He paused. They looked vaguely familiar in some way, like he had seen them before somewhere. The woman was adorned in a snow white dress, the man a pitch black suit. He didn't know rich people, and yet they were definitely familiar.
"You stand in the presence of our two leaders-" the girl announced, and then something within Grayson's mind clicked.
"Mahi? Aurel?"
"Grayson?"
He flinched backwards as if struck. It was them. It was really them. They were here, in this place. "What-" he had to choke the words through his tightening throat, "are you doing here?"
The couple ignored his question, still apparently getting over their own shock. Eventually, Mahi spoke. "I could ask the same of you. There's absolutely no way you should be here- none. You," she gestured to the girl, "set him free."
The girl stepped dutifully forward, undoing his handcuffs unquestioningly. He rubbed his wrists, massaging the blood back into them. He couldn't really feel any emotion- it was almost as if that part of his mind had simply switched off. "Why are you here? This is some kind of mistake."
"No mistake." There was a steel in her voice that had never been there when she was working as a trader. "You weren't meant to find out about this for a good while. I can't believe this is coincidence, though- if you're here, there must be a reason for it. I guess we should tell you; we aren't who you thought we were."
"So I can tell. You lied to me. You played me for a fool."
"No more than you with us."
He paused. "So you did hear about that, then. I thought it surprising that you didn't."
"Of course. They'll have been talking about the caster boy there for weeks."
"Who are you really?"
"That's simple. We're the leaders of the Median branch of the Luminacht resistance."
"Of course." His chest began to burn, with what he didn't know. Betrayal, perhaps. "How silly of me to think anything otherwise."
"Don't be too hard on yourself. We've had a long time to practise our personas."
"I know. I liked you guys. Gods help me, I actually trusted you. What a stupid idea. I should have expected something like this to happen. You've betrayed me."
"Betrayed you, like how you betrayed us? When you pretended to have no money so that you could take ours?"
He shrugged. "That's what I do." It wasn't an excuse, let alone a poor one, but he was beyond caring. It turned out that the first people in a long time to have genuinely cared about him were nothing more than yet more liars. This was the exact reason he always chose to distance himself. "So, just out of interest, what do you do when you aren't starting wars in public places and killing innocent bystanders?"
"Grayson, please, it isn't like that. None of that was meant to happen."
"Oh, really? You did a good job of succeeding at what you didn't intend to."
"It was an unexpected disaster. We ordered the gunman to give the shakai cover when they kidnapped the koto. We hadn't realised that the man was a raging psychopath with a vendetta against the Alliance- if we had, we'd never have used him. You and the others getting taken was just unfortunate- my shakai did the best they could, but... well... you've seen how inexperienced they are. This whole thing is just a big misunderstanding."
He wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe that the people who had taken care of him hadn't turned out to be ruthless murderers. Besides, their story did have a ring of truth to it. "But why abduct the koto? You started a war you won't be able to finish."
"I can't tell you that. What I can tell you is that those koto were part of a ring that was involved in the marketing of child slaves. They sold children for slave labour, or prostitution, or whatever sick reasons people wanted them for. They were the worst of the worst, Grayson. We couldn't sit back and do nothing."
"Why do you expect me to care? It's not my problem- I'm a mercenary, not a hero."
"But you have a good heart, I know you do. You stepped in to save that innkeeper when the aetherials were going to attack him. You're a good person."
Grayson laughed humourlessly. "Yeah, I saved the innkeeper. Definitely. It's not like I was after an excuse to rob the aetherials, or anything. But then, that's all irrelevant. For your stupid ideal of justice, you attacked someone from a group well above your league." When he thought about it, it did make a kind of sense. These kinds of amateurs were prone to fighting with their hearts rather than their heads, and they certainly seemed new enough to the business to make that kind of mistake. He found, much to his irritation, that e was beginning to forgive them. He was still furious, but at least he felt he understood the circumstances. "Why this 'resistance' anyway? What do you have against the UA?"
"You should know that. The Alliance is a group of thugs and bullies who spend their time threatening our country into submission and taking everything they want. You don't see it Grayson, because it doesn't affect someone independent like you, but that incident with the aetherials in the tavern doesn't even come close to what they're doing. Luminacht is for us, not them, and we're getting rid of them; permanently."
"You've started a war you can't win. You've signed your own death warrants."
"You think we don't know what we've gotten ourselves into? We know exactly how easily the Alliance could crush us- but first they'd have to find us. And even they wouldn't go so far as to declare war on an entire planet network over a rebellion. Besides," she fixed him with a paralysing gaze, "wouldn't you rather die for something than live for nothing?"
Grayson sighed to himself. They were idiots. He had, although he hated to admit it, forgiven them. They were idiots, but they were noble ones, however misguided. They were the kind who got themselves killed. "So what was it?"
"What was what?"
"You were going to make me an offer, before you discovered who I was. What was it?"
"Oh," she looked away, "that. Actually... we were going to ask you... to fight for us."
"And what if I had said no?"
"Well, nothing now."
"But then?"
"We..." she still wouldn't meet his eyes, "would have killed you."
"But not now?"
"Of course not!" She rounded on him all of a sudden, furious at his question. "We would never do that. We just thought you were working for the Alliance. We wouldn't kill you."
"Good. Because I won't fight for you."
"Grayson-"
"No. You've brought this upon yourselves. I respect your courage, and I admire your principles, but you made this mistake yourself. I'm not going to die for someone else's cause. Let me go."
"Yes, of course. Although..."
"Although?" Suddenly he was alert. There was a catch, after all.
"Nothing. If that's really your decision, we won't stop you."
"Answer me. What were you going to say?"
"Just... that it might be too late."
"Why, exactly," he was having an extraordinarily hard time staying calm, "would it be too late?"
"Because... well..."
She trailed off without finishing her sentence, and the shakai girl finished it for her. "They're already here."
"Already here? What the hell do you mean, they're already here?"
"We didn't realise it was you," Mahi took over again, "we thought you were an Alliance soldier, so we didn't worry about it. The Peacekeepers are already sniffing around here and we need to take them down before they discover our hideout. We only have a few minutes, so if you're lucky you might still be able to make it. But I won't have time to heal you."
"Gods," Grayson flung his head in his hands, "damnit! You've gotten me trapped in your own problems!"
"I'm sorry Grayson, we never intended for it to turn out this way. But if you really don't want to fight, you might still have time to escape. You might get
lucky."
He sat down, suddenly tired beyond imagining. Sure, he'd wanted to butt heads with someone earlier, but getting into a war with the undisputed masters of the universe was not what he had had in mind. He sighed heavily. "You can heal me?"
"I'm rank five for my power, but I'm not a fighter. If you want me to, I can fix your body for you, but it will take a few minutes. You won't have time to escape."
"And how many Peacekeepers are out there?"
"Perhaps a dozen."
"What ranks are they?"
"Standard, low level thirds."
"How many do you have to combat them?"
"We have a human gunman and an aetherial swordsman."