Chapter 17
Jericho
The guards don’t speak during the walk to detention. Just grip my arms and move me through corridors carved into the mountainside. I’m being frog-marched like a convict. One of them jerks my shoulder when I don’t turn fast enough at a junction.
I don’t react. Learned decades ago that showing pain or resistance only makes it worse. Better to be stone. Better to let them think I’m not a threat.
We descend three levels. The air gets colder, the lighting harsher. Security checkpoints every fifty feet—reinforced doors, biometric scanners, guards stationed at intervals. Level three: maximum security. I suspect this is where they keep the ones who won’t see release.
Criminals. Traitors. Enemies of the Aurora Collective.
I’m one or all of those things, depending on perspective.
The processing room is small and clinical. White walls. Metal table. Medical equipment. Two guards wait inside.
“Strip,” one says. Flat. Professional.
I comply. Remove my clothes systematically. They search each piece before tossing it aside. Then me—thorough, invasive, dehumanizing. Standard procedure for hostile intake. I’ve conducted enough of these myself to know the routine.
Medical scan next. They check for concealed weapons, implants, trackers. Find nothing because there’s nothing to find. The cuffs already block my fire. Now they’re verifying I’m not a walking bomb.
“Suppression field test,” the lead guard says.
They activate it. The field hits like a wave—not painful, just oppressive. My dragon recoils, pressed down by invisible weight. I can’t reach my fire at all. Can’t shift. Can’t access anything that makes me what I am.
Just a man in a cell.
They hand me gray standard-issue clothes. Prison uniform. I dress without comment.
“Move.”
We walk deeper into the detention center, past occupied cells. I can hear breathing, movement, the sounds of other prisoners existing in their cages. The guard stops at a door marked 3-7.
Biometric scan. The lock disengages with a heavy click.
“Inside.”
I walk in. The door closes behind me. Locks engage. Multiple mechanisms. I hear them all.
Then: silence.
The cell is exactly what I expected. Ten feet by twelve.
Concrete walls reinforced with steel. Suppression field generator mounted in the ceiling, pulsing with a steady rhythm that I can feel against my skin.
No windows. One fluorescent light recessed behind protective grating.
Concrete sleeping platform with a thin mattress. Metal toilet. Small sink. Nothing else.
Home for the foreseeable future.
Or the last place I’ll see before execution.
I sit on the edge of the platform. The mattress is standard issue—barely thick enough to qualify as padding. I’ve slept on worse.
The suppression field weighs on me. Not unbearable but constant. A pressure that reminds me with every breath that I’m contained, controlled, powerless.
My dragon is buried so deep I can barely sense him. Just a distant awareness of fire I can’t access.
The situation is straightforward: Maximum security cell. Full suppression. No contact with the outside. No timeline for release or interrogation. Council meeting in seventy-two hours to decide my fate.
Three possible outcomes. They might grant sanctuary. They might execute me for decades of service to the Syndicate. They might imprison me indefinitely while they verify my intelligence.
I knew the risks when I defected. Knew Aurora might not trust me. Knew my past would make sanctuary difficult, even with valuable intelligence to trade.
What I didn’t know was Nadia.
Where did Viktor take her? What’s happening to her right now? Is she being interrogated about the last forty-eight hours? About what Viktor walked in on?
Even buried beneath suppression, my dragon stirs, recognition pulling at something deeper than conscious thought. The field can suppress my fire, but it can’t erase what my dragon knows.
Mine.
She’s mine.
The timing is catastrophic. She came to kill me. And now we’re—what? Bonded? Caught in something neither of us chose and neither of us knows how to navigate?
If I survive the Council’s judgment, I still have to survive that.
Time passes. No way to track it without windows or clocks. Could be an hour. Could be three. The suppression field makes everything feel slower, heavier.
I lie back on the mattress. Stare at the ceiling. Calculate probabilities.
Execution: forty percent. My crimes are extensive. Decades of Syndicate service. Operations that killed Aurora operatives. Orders I gave that destroyed lives. They have every justification to end me.
Indefinite imprisonment: thirty percent. Keep me alive for intelligence value, but never release me. Use me until I’m no longer useful, then dispose of me quietly.
Conditional sanctuary: thirty percent. Grant protection in exchange for full intelligence cooperation. Restricted movement. Constant surveillance. Never fully trusted but alive.
All three end with me in a cage of some kind.
I don’t regret it.
Even knowing the odds, even sitting in this cell, even facing possible execution, I don’t regret defecting.
The Syndicate was becoming something I couldn’t reconcile with what I believed. Killing hybrids. Hunting families. Destroying anyone who didn’t fit the Ivory League’s vision of purity.
I could have stayed. Could have kept following orders. Could have buried doubt beneath discipline and loyalty.
Instead, I’m here. And if they execute me tomorrow, at least I stopped being complicit.
The door opens. I sit up. Guards would have announced themselves. This is someone with the authority to enter unescorted.
Viktor Parlance steps inside. Alone. The door closes behind him, but doesn’t lock. Power move; he’s not afraid of me even though we’re alone in a cell.
He should be. Suppression field or not, I have centuries of combat experience. I could kill him before the guards responded.
But that would accomplish nothing except confirming I’m too dangerous to live.
So I stay seated. Hands visible. Posture non-threatening.
He studies me for a moment. I do the same.
I’ve never encountered a shifter like him.
Teak skin, silver hair pulled back in a knot.
He’s blind in one eye, the afflicted one milky, but that doesn’t diminish the cold intelligence there.
This is a man who’s made hard decisions and lived with them.
A tactician. A leader who’s guided the Aurora Collective into a direction that few of us expected when the organization formed barely two decades ago.
A place where all are welcome, as long as they understand the rules. Hard, but fair.
I respect that, even if it means he might order my execution.
“You promised critical intelligence,” he says. Straight to business. “What do you have?”
Direct. Efficient. The reason he’s here.
“Syndicate command structure first,” I say. “Verification of what Aurora already suspects.”
He pulls a small tablet from his jacket. “Names.”
I list them. Current Ivory League membership. Territories. Chain of command. Information Aurora probably has, but needs verified from a primary source.
He listens. Makes notes. Asks clarifying questions. Professional interrogation—not hostile, not friendly. Just efficient extraction.
We go through operational details next. Recent activities. Facility locations. Supply chains. Personnel movements. I answer factually. No embellishment. No withholding except the piece I’m saving.
This is the baseline. The foundation of trust I need to build.
“And the critical intelligence?” Viktor asks. “The reason you requested sanctuary?”
Here it is. The leverage I came with.
“Roland Vex,” I say. Watch his face for recognition. See it immediately—subtle tightening around his eyes. “He’s conducting hybrid shifter experiments. Active facility. Not in Syndicate territory. Yours.”
Viktor goes very still. The kind of stillness that precedes violence or critical decisions.
“Explain.”
“Vex has a research facility within two hundred miles of this headquarters. He’s using it to experiment on hybrid shifters. Testing forced transformations, genetic manipulation, combat enhancement.”
“How do you know this?”
“I commanded security oversight for Syndicate research divisions. Vex’s projects crossed my desk regularly. This particular facility was established eighteen months ago.”
“Location.”
“That’s my guarantee,” I say. “Along with security details, personnel rosters, supply manifests. Everything you need to verify and shut it down. But only after sanctuary is confirmed.”
His expression doesn’t change, but the air in the cell shifts. Colder. More dangerous.
“You’re in no position to negotiate.”
“You need this intelligence,” I counter. “Vex is operating under your nose. How many of your people have gone missing in the last year? How many disappearances you couldn’t explain?”
His jaw tightens fractionally. I’ve hit something true.
“The Council decides sanctuary,” he says. “Not me.”
“Then take this to the Council. Tell them I have everything they need. Location. Security protocols. Timeline. But the deal requires a guarantee of protection. And this is time-sensitive. There are lives on the line.”
“Lives?” His eyes narrow. I nod. “And you would risk them for your own safety?”
“Not if I can help it,” I tell him. “But right now, it’s the only leverage I have. I’m here in good faith, Parlance. But I can’t risk having you lock me in here for months—years, maybe— while you deliberate over it.”
There’s a long silence. Viktor weighing options. Weighing whether I’m lying, whether the intel justifies the risk.
Finally: “This documentation. Where is it?”
“Retrievable once terms are agreed.”
“If you’re lying—”
“I’m not.”
He studies me. Then shifts topics without warning. “What happened out there? Between you and Frost?”
The question catches me off guard. Not the intelligence. Not verification. Personal.
“We survived,” I say. Carefully neutral.
“She resigned from Aurora three days ago.” His voice stays flat. Clinical. “Walked out of a Council meeting, furious that we’d grant you sanctuary. Said she was done. Then she went into those mountains to kill you.”
I say nothing. There’s nothing to say that won’t make this worse.
“She came back with you alive,” Viktor continues. “Clearly compromised. So I’ll ask again: what happened?”
“Syndicate ambushed the convoy. She fought them. Saved me. A storm trapped us. We survived together.”
“That’s the tactical summary. What else?”
I meet his eyes. “You walked in on what else.”
His expression hardens. “She wanted you dead. Now she can barely watch you being detained without—” He stops. Reconsiders. “You’ve compromised one of my best operatives.”
“She’d already resigned,” I point out. “She wasn’t your operative when we met.”
“That’s semantics, and you know it.”
Fair enough.
“What happened wasn’t tactical,” I say finally. “It wasn’t planned. It just… happened.”
“Aurora and Syndicate don’t mate.”
The blunt statement sits between us.
“No,” I agree. “They don’t.”
“And yet…”
“I’m no longer Syndicate.”
He studies me. Reading. Calculating. Making decisions I’m not privy to.
“The Council meets in forty-eight hours,” he says finally. “They’ll decide your fate based on the intelligence you’re offering. This information about Vex… it changes calculations. But it doesn’t guarantee anything.”
“I understand.”
“If the facility exists and your intel is accurate, sanctuary becomes more likely. If you’re lying, execution becomes certain.”
“I’m not lying.”
He walks to the door. Knocks once. It opens immediately—guards waiting outside.
Before he leaves, he looks back. “Frost has been given orders. No contact with you until the Council decides. If you care about her at all, you’ll hope they grant sanctuary. Because if they don’t, she’ll spend the rest of her life knowing she compromised herself for nothing.”
Then he’s gone. The door locks behind him.
I sit back down on the mattress.
The Vex intelligence is out there now. Viktor will take it to the Council. They’ll weigh whether the information is worth granting sanctuary to a war criminal.
It might be enough.
Might not.
Meanwhile, Nadia waits. Probably blaming herself for complications she didn’t create. Probably wondering what happens next.
My dragon pushes against the suppression. Wanting to go to her. Wanting to make sure she’s okay. Frustrated by barriers that keep us separated.
I try to focus on what I can control. Which is nothing. Just wait for the Council to decide if I live or die.
The light in the ceiling flickers once. Steady hum of the suppression field. Concrete walls closing in.
I came here for sanctuary. I might die here instead.
But I’d do it again.
The certainty sits in my chest. Absolute. Unshakeable. I’d make the same choice. Defect. Risk everything. End up in this cell awaiting execution.
But would I do it for ideology alone?
The question surfaces despite trying to avoid it. Is this about the Syndicate? About stopping complicity in atrocities? About moral clarity?
Or is it about her?
I don’t know. That’s the truth I can’t escape. I defected before I met her. The decision was made. The intelligence gathered. The sanctuary request submitted. But somewhere in those mountains, my reasons changed.
Or maybe they just expanded.
Purpose isn’t always singular. Sometimes it’s layered. Ideology and desire. Principle and recognition. The right thing and the necessary thing.
I defected to stop being complicit.
I’d do it again… because of her.