R7 sighed, the smile fading from her face.
“No, I don’t. I mean, he’s the brains behind the robots for sure, but he had a boss.”
“Well, I’m sure the interrogation will—”
“Don’t need one,” said R7, too tired to worry about interrupting. “The second operator got away, but I found this in the truck they left behind.”
She pulled out the card and tossed it across the desk. The Chief raised his eyebrow, but he picked it up anyway—and as he looked at it, understanding permeated his stern expression. After all, the card bore a distinctive insignia: a lion with a spear in its left hand, surrounded by flames. Them.
The Chief’s steely brows drew down, etching deep lines in his forehead as he slid the card back to her.
“Well,” he said, “you and G3 will have your work cut out for you when he gets back.”
R7 ground her teeth, pocketing the card before she crumpled it in frustration.
“He won’t be back for weeks, at least,” she growled. “You really want me to wait that long?”
The Chief sighed, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms—the first time she’d ever seen him stop looking as stiff as a railroad spike.
“R7,” he said, “I don’t know how much G3’s told you, but he’s been chasing this Levak ghost for years. This isn’t his first hospital stay coming out of that case. His last partner was killed working on it—and still no results. So you may have closed your first case, but you’re not ready to take this one on by yourself yet. I know,” he said, when she opened her mouth to protest, “you don’t like that answer. But you’re going to have to live with it. Be patient. Maybe take your first day off.”
R7 bit back a sharp retort and stood up, nodding tightly. She turned to leave, but when she was halfway out the door, the Chief called after her.
“R7?”
She turned back to look at him, while the rest of the office listened surreptitiously behind their papers and folders.
“Good work today, Agent,” he said.
§
R7 slid the card out of her pocket and stared at it as she finished the dregs of the coffee. In her mind’s eye, she saw the desperate reference to Them in Von Krauss’ journal, the insignia burning on the surface of the matte white card, the trove of boxes in Tony’s cellar, the playing card the Red Death had thrown, the vivid bloody anger that had scorched her vision during the fight in the square, the unbearable memories that had surfaced then, and a thousand others she was still hiding from. The Chief might be right that she couldn’t take on the entire case alone...but still, she couldn’t let it go.
Something was missing—some piece that hasn’t quite fallen into place yet. She tried to ignore it, but it stuck in her mind like a splinter, and she kept working at it, no matter how much it stung.
“Hey, R7,” someone said.
She looked up sharply to see Spence pulling up a chair, a piece of paper in her hand.
“Spence,” she said, pocketing the card again. “What are you doing here so late? The action’s all over.”
“For you, maybe,” said the analyst. “B4 has me working another case.”
“Oh,” said R7. “Sorry I drank all the coffee, then.”
Spence laughed.
“No problem,” she said. “Actually, I’m glad I caught you. I finished analyzing that coat you brought me—from the Red Death?”
“Yeah? Find anything?”
“It’s strange,” said Spence, frowning at her paper and pushing her glasses up on her nose. “The coat has the same substance on it as the scrap you gave me earlier. Fortunately, there was enough to run some tests this time, and—well, it’s very odd, but the only thing I can match it to is...stage makeup.”
Stage makeup. Suddenly, it hit her as she remembered everything the vigilante had done: covering his escape in a puff of smoke. Throwing his voice. Sliding out of his coat and disappearing from right in front of her. That trick with the Queen of Spades.
The Red Death was a stage magician.
Abruptly, she stood up, nearly toppling her chair.
“Thanks, Spence!” she said as she dashed out the door, leaving the pleased but puzzled analyst alone in the kitchen.
Having no interest in explaining what she was doing to anyone, R7 took the subway back to the theater district by herself, her mind racing the whole time. The puzzle wasn’t complete yet, but she was certain now that the Red Death was the key to finding the last piece. After all, he was the one part of all of this that had never quite made sense. She’d known Tony was involved in all this because the Red Death had been at the robot attack in Hanover Square, but how had he known about the mob connection? He must have known far more about what was going on, far earlier, than she had. In her gut, she knew what that meant: he knew about the box. And she could almost, but not quite, put her finger on why knowing where he’d be hiding out made her so sure about it.
Her mind still trailed inches behind her feet as she ran up the stairs out of the subway and onto the street. Times Square was almost back to normal already, the cleanup crew long gone, the onlookers back to their dinners and juice joints and shows. Shoving her hands in her pockets and keeping her head down to avoid being noticed as best she could in the military uniform, she strolled past the theaters and their bright lights. Of course, the Red Death wasn’t going to be in one of those—an open, working theater wouldn’t exactly be a good place for a vigilante’s hideout. Instead, she kept moving until she found what she was looking for: a dilapidated abandoned building on Forty-Second. Its sign was dark, its box office silent, its windows boarded up for so long that the nails had begun to rust.
Bullseye.
Coaxing her booted feet into silence, R7 crept into the nearest alley and found the theater’s back door. In the darkness, she tried the door and found it locked. Well, she’d come this far, she thought, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a set of objects and skills she’d never planned to use again. It still took her less than a minute to pick the lock.
It was even darker inside: a small dressing room leading into a narrow hallway, which was lit only by slivers of moonlight sliding through dusty air. She padded down the hall, avoiding cluttered collections of unrecognizable props lying in wait, her senses reaching out for any sign that she wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t until she was slipping through the cobwebbed, mildewed curtains lining the wings backstage that she finally heard someone breathing. She peered out to see a broad-shouldered man sitting on the stage in a pool of sallow lamp light, his feet dangling over the edge as he bent over a notebook.
She watched him for a moment in silence, holding her breath, trying to decide what to do next—this was as far as her plan had gone. Should she try to pin him down again? Or...just try to talk to him? But before she could decide, she shifted her weight, and her foot went right through a rotten board.
The Red Death stood up and turned around, his coat whipping as it whirled with him, while R7 swore and pulled her foot free. A small flurry of playing cards came flying her way, and she batted them out of the air as the vigilante rushed toward her. The attack took her so off guard that he actually landed an upper cut to her ribs and a mean right hook that turned her head. With an effort, she reigned in instinct and training, and she didn’t hit him back.
“Cut it out!” she yelled instead, shoving him away from her.
He flew back a couple of yards and fell, tumbling across the dusty stage before rolling to his feet. His face was unmasked, but in the darkness, she still couldn’t quite make it out.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty, cavernous theater. “I didn’t realize it was you.”
“I just want to talk,” she called, raising both hands in the air in surrender.
“Sounds great,” he said. “Let’s get a drink some time when we’re both out of uniform.”
“Out of—wait!” she cried, as he dropped a smoke grenade like the one he’d used at El Fey, enshrouding hi
m completely in the darkness. “Damnit, don’t do this!”
R7 scrambled out onto the stage, but the Red Death had already slid out of her grasp. She closed her eyes, listening for his escaping footsteps, but he’d wised up to that trick; the crackle and pop of gunpowder sparkled all around her, disorienting her ears just as the smoke veiled her eyes. In seconds, she knew it was too late—he was gone.
A wave of despair and renewed anger crashed over her, and she let out a wordless cry of frustration. A hollow version of her voice circled back to her in the darkness, mocking her, and she clenched her fists. So close, she thought as she stepped off the edge of the stage, dropping to the floor below and stalking up the abandoned theater’s aisle. She was so close, and she’d let him get away again! How could she be so stupid?
She stormed out the darkened lobby, kicking long-neglected chairs out of her path. When she reached the front doors, she shoved them open, snapping the chain that held them closed and bursting out into the night. Even though she knew he was long gone now, she looked back and forth down Forty-Second, hoping to see a sign of his escape route.
But instead, her eyes landed on the sign hanging in front of the theater. The first time she’d seen it, looking only for indications of abandonment, she’d only noticed its lack of neon—it was an old-style wooden carving, its calligraphic letters painted in black. This time, she read what it actually said:
The Amazing Patch Philadelphia
Returns to the Empire State!
Time stopped.
R7 froze, staring at the sign, her eyes fixed on its surface as she read the words over and over until she could no longer deny what she was seeing. A memory hammered at the wall she’d built in her mind to keep herself safe, and she tried to force it away. She couldn’t do it, she thought, still standing motionless on the sidewalk as the memory fought to breach the barrier. She couldn’t let it all in.
But as high and sturdy as she’d built her defense, as steadily as it had protected her for all this time, now, her need to know the answer was greater and stronger still. You’re going to need every part of who you are to do what you set out to do, G3 had said. And right now, she needed this memory. So she let it through.
“I know this item, señor, but I am afraid I sold it yesterday.”
“That’s a pity. Any chance you remember the buyer?”
The pressure built as the memory came through in a trickle—then a flood. Fizzures appeared in the wall’s surface, then started to spread.
Francisco nodded.
“It was another magician who said that he was buying it for his wife. He was a handsome gentleman, like yourself, but with darker hair, and—ah, pardon me, señor, but he was much...taller.”
The wall cracked with a force like thunder. R7 tried to hold it together, to keep it standing, but it crumbled into pieces.
“And he didn’t give his name?”
“I’m sorry, señor, no. But I do seem to recall that he was from Philadelphia.”
Without the red rage to protect her from the pain when the memory flowed in undammed, R7 fell to her knees, shaking as she struggled to breathe. It couldn’t be—and yet, it had to be.
The box. A magician. Philadelphia.
And the wall fell.
Chapter 35—R7
Eventually, the boat I’d been tossed onto stopped moving, and I vaguely understood that we’d hit land. Doughboys came in and practically carried me from the makeshift brig to another holding cell. I hardly noticed the change; likely delirious from starvation after weeks of refusing food and water, I was suspended between the present and the past, drifting in and out of consciousness. Sometimes I thought I was at home, either in Paris or back in New York, and everyone was there with me. Sometimes when I could feel the feverish translucence of my hallucination, I thought I was back on the boat to Europe, trying to fight off the poison. Sometimes I knew I was in a cell, but even then, I often thought I was being held by the spies again, and that I needed to warn Alger. But whenever I thought of Alger, I remembered the truth: he was gone, lost forever, just like the rest of them.
Then one day, someone came to speak to me. I woke up, hearing the clicks of padlocks and the creak of my cell door swinging open. Peering out of the corner, I saw a clean-cut, fortyish man in a uniform walking over to me. He looked at me for a moment, assessing my condition, and then he spoke.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I was confused. Why should anyone care what my name was? But eventually, because there was no reason not to, I answered.
“Victoria,” I rasped.
He nodded.
“Well, Victoria,” he said, “I don’t know how you’ve survived this long, but we’ve been on land for two weeks.”
We? I didn’t understand.
“Who are you?”
“Ah,” he said, realizing the problem. “You can call me G3. I’m the one who didn’t kill you. ”
My eyes narrowed as I finally recognized him. The prisoner. The lingering, dull hatred that pulsed through me began to reconnect me to reality.
“No, not me,” I said.
With a surge of rage, I tried to stand, but my limbs were too weak to hold my weight. When my knees buckled immediately, he caught my arms, holding me up. Gripping his elbows with the shreds of strength I had remaining, I glared malevolently at him.
“How many of them did you kill?” I growled.
“As many as I had to,” he answered, with neither pity nor malice.
Watching him return my gaze unflinchingly, I felt the anger flicker out again. What did it matter? They were just as dead either way. I sank back to the floor with his help.
“What do you want?” I finally asked.
“Actually, I’m here to make you an offer,” he said unexpectedly.
I couldn’t imagine caring less.
“There’s nothing I want.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “Victoria, right now you’re in a temporary holding cell. The plan is that tomorrow, if you live that long, you’ll be taken to the usual authorities. There’ll be a quick, easy trial. And then you’ll go to jail, probably for the rest of your life, for everything you did with Slade and your other associates. But,” he added, his tone shifting slightly, “it doesn’t have to be that way. I’d like to offer you another option. You can join us.”
“Join you?” I sneered at him, my desolation turning to contempt. “Whoever you are, you took everything from me. What the hell makes you think prison wouldn’t be better than joining you?”
To my surprise, he smiled.
“Oh, I think you’ll see.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever really known why, but somewhere deep down, my spirit must not have been as broken as I thought. Because in spite of everything, I spite of how much I hated this “G3,” I was curious about what that meant. And so, suspicious but intrigued, I let my captor lead me to a bare office, where I glared at him across a desk while he brought me a glass of water. Reluctantly, I took a sip and tried to keep it down.
“So, spill,” I snapped, when the water had dampened my throat enough to let me speak again. “Just what have you got that you think will change my mind?”
“I’ll get to that,” he promised. “But first I’ll need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“What do you want to know?”
He nodded, pulling out a file.
“For at least the past month, you’ve been working for the owner of the house we left not long ago. Is that right?”
“Levak,” I breathed, clenching my fists weakly.
“You know him?”
“No,” I said. “He—I never met him. We weren’t supposed to be working with him long.”
“I take it you didn’t want to work with him at all?”
I shook my head, digging my nails into the top of the table.
“None of us did. He tried to kill us over and over. It almost worked a couple of times. And his men…” My head swam with fury when I thought abou
t the Brute. I breathed in and out slowly, forcing myself to concentrate. “Working with him was a last resort. And that was before we knew his…‘methods.’”
I looked at G3 again, and his fading bruises, visible now in the harsh light, served as a reminder of those “methods.” For the first time, my hatred started to fade, and I remembered the way I felt when when we’d let that happen. G3 nodded, obviously catching my meaning, and opened his file. He flipped through it and slid out a grainy photograph.
“This is what he looks like,” he told me, handing me the picture across the desk. In the end, I found that I wasn’t surprised to be looking at a familiar face: dark hair, a thin beard, and eyes that were far blacker even than their color. He’d been at the auction, on the train, and in my nightmares. Are you scared?
I crumpled the picture in one hand, starting to shake a little.
“I thought I hated you more than anyone,” I whispered.
“I thought you might feel that way.” G3 smiled mirthlessly. “So here’s the point. I was at that house because I’ve been investigating Levak for several years. I thought this was my chance to take him down, but he got away. Now it’s going to take some more time before I get another shot at him because the Agency isn’t interested enough in this project to invest any more in it just yet. But.” He laid his hands on the desk, palms up as if showing all his cards. “If you join us. If you let us train you. If you put in some time—if you can be patient. Then I promise you, I can give you your chance at revenge.”
Revenge? I’d never considered it before, but now I let myself taste the thought for a long moment. I’d been sure I had nothing to live for, but…maybe this was something I could hold onto. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea of working for the man who’d killed everyone I’d ever cared about…but, then again, after what he’d been through—after what we’d let him go through—could I really, honestly say I blamed him? He might’ve done things I could never forgive, but I knew in my heart that by then, the Gang and I—and even Alger—had been on the wrong side. And the reason we’d been there hadn’t been G3. It had been Levak.
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