Chapter 17
Seventeen
Caius
Caius considered the entrance of his cell where the cloaked figure and her companion had disappeared, his feelings more complicated than warranted given the brevity of their acquaintance. Due to the drugs he’d been given upon capture, it was hard to tell what was real and what was dream.
In a sense, it didn’t matter. The outcome would have been the same regardless.
He did feel a lot more clear headed though since his dream woman’s visit.
Startlingly so, given the amount of truth serum they’d pumped into him.
It was potent stuff, designed to loosen his tongue and make him spill Roake’s secrets.
It’d contained the side benefit of also amplifying his five senses to unbearable levels.
Until something as simple as the brush of a hand felt like torture.
Caius wondered where they’d gotten it and if he could get the formula. It might come in handy during the course of his duties. There were always prisoners who needed breaking and what they’d used on him was probably one of the best examples of a truth serum he’d encountered.
Maybe his jani could whip something up. She seemed to like playing with drugs.
Attachments were a luxury he rarely indulged, but for her, he might be willing to make an exception. Something about her was different. Instinct told him she could quite easily become integral to his existence. That if he let her, she could become more important than the very air in his lungs.
That was why he had to send her away. Despite the craving that was just beginning to heat his blood. He couldn’t afford the distraction. It wouldn’t always be that way, but for now, distance was best for what he needed to do.
“Uncovering traitors is a thankless business,” Caius muttered.
After the lengths he’d gone to ensure his capture on the station, he couldn’t allow himself to be rescued right on the cusp of luring his quarry out from their hiding place.
He’d known something was wrong for a while now.
There had been too many coincidences of late to look past. Missions that went sideways when they shouldn’t have.
Intelligence gaps in a network that had always been dependable.
Breakdowns in Roake’s supply trains. All small things that when added up painted a grim picture.
Officially, his visit to the enclave had been about investigating the unmarked world gates that had begun popping up in places they shouldn’t have been.
The reality was a lot less straight forward.
The enclave wasn’t just a haven for wanderers but an unofficial arm of House Roake.
Clandestine and put into play those times Roake needed something done while also claiming plausible deniability.
Its fall had come as a shock, and he would be sure to impress his feelings regarding its fate on the traitor he expected to walk into his cell any moment now.
He’d had a lot of friends in the enclave.
People he’d grown up with. Individuals his parents had scouted and who’d been like aunts and uncles to him.
Oh yes, he had a lot of emotions to work through when his traitor arrived.
Only Harlow, Roake’s Overlord, and Caius’s closest guards knew where he’d gone. Harlow wouldn’t have betrayed Caius. That left his guards. Men and women who’d served at his side for over a century.
Betrayal always stung. This one more than most.
The chains clinked as Caius shifted, trying to get as comfortable as his injuries would allow. This could take a while. Good thing he was the patient sort.
Gus
Gus stared at Brooks once he got finished with his explanation. “How sure are you about this?”
“Pretty sure. Saw the kid with my own eyes. It’s the same boy who was with the Phoenix on Titan. She called him Jin.”
There was only one person Kira would have called by that name.
Jin, himself.
Did Ryan know what those two had done? Did the rest of the forty-three?
Unconsciously, Gus quickened her pace. She hoped not. Mars and Cleo’s actions proved the forty-three were no longer trustworthy.
If this news got out…
Gus shuddered.
Thistle vines and ballycock burs. There was no telling what would happen.
“Funny thing is—all the stories about the Phoenix places her with a companion at her side. A drone. A J1N.” Brooks glanced at Gus out of the corner of his eye. “They say she called it Jin. Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?”
Gus slowed.
Realizing she was no longer beside him, Brooks sent her a questioning look.
“You seem to know a lot about the Phoenix,” Gus said.
A little too much, if you asked her.
Jin’s connection to Kira wasn’t exactly a secret but few had ever bothered learning his name. Only those close to her. For everyone else, he was always the drone. Or that thing. Sometimes J-1-N. Never Jin.
He was a tool. A machine. Things like that didn’t need names.
Brooks cocked his head, his expression easy. “Didn’t you know? Our paths crossed a time or two during the war.”
“Did they?”
Gus narrowed her eyes. He was playing games with her.
Brooks was too observant not to have picked up on her sudden tension or the way she was eyeing him like he might be a hidden enemy.
“We served on a couple of the same ships,” Brooks admitted.
“I didn’t know that.”
Granted, a lot of Brooks’s history before he came to her was sealed off and inaccessible. She’d always assumed that was because he worked in black ops.
And maybe he had. Just a little closer to Kira than she previously suspected.
The way he spoke, the confidence, it suggested a knowledge of her sister and her habits that didn’t come from passing acquaintance.
It pointed to close study. The kind you did when you were assessing a person’s weaknesses.
Getting to know them and what made them tick so you could take them down later if need be.
“You don’t know everything about me, boss,” Brooks drawled with an expression like he thought she was adorable.
Gus’s lips flattened. Should she just kill him?
It’d make things simpler. No worrying about his motives or if he’d be the next one to stick a knife in her back.
Of course, it would be a blow to lose someone of his caliber. As evidenced by his presence here, Brooks possessed an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time. Just like Kira, in fact. That, if anything, should have decided her.
The problem was that Gus wasn’t in a position to be picky. After the mess with Kyle, she needed allies. Now, more than ever.
She supposed that meant Brooks got to live.
For now.
As if sensing her thoughts, Brooks crooked one side of his mouth upward. “I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t have to worry. My loyalty has been yours since the moment you dragged me out of that hell hole.”
“I hope so, Brooks.”
She really did.
It would be a shame to lose such a valuable subordinate.
Brooks stopped in front of a set of blast doors someone had jury rigged to block off the entrance to the next cell. “This should be it. I don’t know how you’re going to get inside though. The place is locked up tight.”
“That’s easy.” Gus nudged Brooks behind her, waiting until he was an appropriate distance away before turning back to the door. “I’m going to knock.”
Something that was so simple. So obvious that most would never consider.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
“I’ll be damned,” Brooks said as movement came from inside.
Humans were such curious creatures. Their inquisitiveness often no match for their own instincts for self-preservation.
“Wait out here,” Gus instructed as the sound of the bolts being undone came.
Brooks glanced at her, faint notes of resistance and worry in his features. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Gus allowed herself a small smile under her hood where he couldn’t see. “Positive.”
In fact—
“Why don’t you return to Titan? I can wrap up things from here,” Gus commented as the door started to open.
The more she thought about it; the more she liked that idea. It would put distance between him and those secrets she considered too dangerous for him to know.
The human who opened the door took one look at Gus’s cloaked figure and frowned. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Death.”
The human roared with laughter. “Clive—death has come knocking. Want me to let her in?”
There was a murmur from inside, followed by laughter.
The door guard swept Gus a mocking bow as he stepped aside, gesturing for her to pass. “After you, Lady Death.”
Brooks already forgotten, Gus walked past the man with a confidence that came from the utter certainty of knowing she was the biggest, baddest thing in the room.
She reached up, lowering her hood to expose her hair and face.
She wanted them to know the features of the person who killed them.
To carry that knowledge into the next world and hopefully use it to make better choices there.
There were jeers from the humans as she walked to the center of the room with a calm expression.
A portly, middle-aged human propped his chin on his fist as he regarded her from where he sat at a table. “Death, I presume.”
Gus stared, cataloging the human and finding him lacking.
This was who Cleo and Mars had entrusted her organization to? An idiot who didn’t recognize the danger he was in despite it staring him in the face?
Gus was insulted. No, she was furious.
The man’s smile faded around the edges, his eyes hardening into chips of ice. “Best answer me, girl. Else I’ll teach you the meaning of pain.”
“Someone already beat you to the punch,” Gus said with a bitter smile.
No matter what he did, the man before her couldn’t hope to approach the level of depravity and the ability to inflict agony that Esara had been capable of.
“What does Death want today?” one of the pirate’s subordinates joked.
“You.” Gus trailed her gaze over those assembled. “I’m here for you.”
Every last one of them.