10. Aron
ARON
The HQ room goes quiet as I march in, tension crackling in the air. There are about ten men in here, but only Attila and Martin meet my gaze. The rest lower their eyes.
“Why the long faces?”
Not that I have to ask. My questioning sessions always make the men uneasy. I don’t get it. They are trained killing machines, lethal and vicious as fuck in combat. But the minute I start popping off kneecaps for information, they all tiptoe around me like I’m a landmine.
I pull my balaclava off. It’s only when I crumple it in my fingers that I discover the skull white is all crimson. There’s a slice of skin stuck to it, too ... right, I can see how that could be a bit off-putting. But at least I’m wearing black, so all the blood smearing my front isn’t too obvious.
I set the mask aside.
“Repeat after me, everyone,” I address the room grimly. “We’re fucked.”
More eyes on me now. Attila passes me a cigar and a lighter. I stick it between my teeth, click a few times and inhale deeply, holding the smoke in my mouth.
Knowing me well, it’s only when I exhale that Attila asks, “How fucked exactly?”
“They’re planning the biggest campaign yet.” I walk over to the map we keep spread on the table in the centre of the room, chess figurines representing units—white for theirs and black for ours.
They all form a circle around me and watch in breathless horror as I shift the white figures until they’re right next to our lonely black.
“Well fuck me in the ass ...” Martin grunts.
Men murmur nervously, dejectedly. My temples are pounding with the promise of one bitch of a headache.
“Do we call for backup?” Attila asks, like he doesn’t know all the other groups are stretched thin as it is. “What do you want to do?”
Fuck knows. It’s clear we need a covert op—we can never take this many of them head-on. But the problem is that with an offensive this size, the element of surprise can only take us so far.
Has the day finally come? The day I tell them we’re done? The day I arrange a passage to some Mediterranean island for them all, strap explosives to my body and run into a crowd of mustards to take as many of them as possible to hell with me?
I rub my jaw and take a few more drags on my cigar, scanning the map with my eyes.
And fuck me, I finally see it. A way to stall!
“They’ve got to cross the river,” I drawl. “And there’s only one bridge left for miles that has anywhere near the load-bearing capacity they need. Most Suda.”
Translated from the old language of the region: the Bridge of Judgement. How fitting.
“So we blow up the bridge,” Attila states pragmatically. “Your favourite thing to do. We’ve still got plenty of dynamite left. When do you want to go?”
My lips stretch into a nasty smile. “I want to blow it up when they’re on it.”
A few hours later, the room is empty and hazy, wisps of smoke swirling lazily right underneath the ceiling. I’m sprawled on the sofa, taking drag after drag on the third cigar of the night. Head thrown back, I blow out a perfect smoke ring, watching it dissipate as it floats up.
Maybe that happens to all of us. As we rise, we disintegrate, until nothing’s left.
I might go for another cigar after this one. Why not? The chances of getting cancer are over fifty per cent in the Rifterland, no matter what you do. I might as well smoke all I want.
I put the cigar between my teeth and return my attention to the crybaby’s laptop. And to what’s become my pastime over the last few days.
I’m going through the traitor’s photos one by one.
All of them, even the drafts, even the scraps, the ones in the trash.
Even the one million shots of Volker’s eldest daughter Daria—the stuck-up bitch—in the skimpiest possible outfits, jutting her hips and pouting her lips.
Those are useless to me. I can tell even Riley was bored taking them.
But the rest are helping me map their movements to determine whether there’s any truth to that fairy tale about working with the Hounds.
I’ve seen hundreds of the photos already, if not thousands.
And there isn’t a single one of the Hounds’ camp, members, or anything else that could indicate any connection between the duo and the rebel group.
Not that it’s surprising. Martin told me that, in addition to a tracker, he removed three types of spyware from the device.
Mustards always had access to the traitor’s photos, and she and the crybaby likely knew that.
How they would have managed to bypass it and send anything to Synechord is beyond me, but Martin assured me it’s not impossible.
But they would have been stupid to keep any proof of association with the rebels on a monitored laptop.
I’m on a wild goose chase. I know that, but still I refuse to give up until I’ve seen all her work.
“Your hooker’s here. I sent her upstairs,” Attila announces, marching in. “You’ve got some appetite this week.”
“She can wait,” I dismiss him unenthusiastically.
He plops down in the armchair opposite me, lighting his own cigar. I barely raise my eyes to acknowledge him, still flicking through the images.
“Are we a fucking hotel now or what?” His voice grates on my nerves.
It’s been one hell of a day. All I want to do is go through these in peace. And in silence.
“What are you on about?”
“If we take any more prisoners, we won’t have anywhere to put them.”
I hold the cigar smoke in my mouth, counting to ten. I exhale. I rub my jaw. And only then do I respond, “I’ll get rid of the patrolmen soon.”
He can kiss my ass. If he wants to say something, then he’d better just fucking say it.
“You really need a new hobby,” he remarks, indicating the laptop with the cigar like a pointer stick.
“Or a new second-in-command,” I retort.
“Hey, I’m just saying, it’s weird! Usually, you’re foaming at the mouth to butcher them.”
He rakes his hand through his blond hair, ruffling it.
He’s slumped in the chair with his knees wide apart, arms on the rests.
The cigar hangs between his fingers, ash dropping to the floor, staining the tiles.
He’s a picture of easy, unforced arrogance—the kind you’re born with.
The kind that tends to be mutually exclusive with actual, earned confidence.
Not the greatest trait in a friend, but not the worst in a second-in-command.
“I’m investigating. I want to know the facts before I act.”
“Bullshit.” He shakes his head, smoke coming out of his nose. “But whatever. Can I at least have a fuck too once you get bored with her? I’m dying to know what the fuss is all about.”
“You know what I’m dying to know?” I ask him in a flat, level voice without bothering to look at him.
“What?”
“How hard it would be to push a lit cigar down someone’s throat. Not very hard, I reckon, but I won’t know until I try it ...” I glance up, briefly, just long enough for him to register the threat in my glare.
Contrary to what he thinks, he isn’t untouchable. No one is. He needs to stop forgetting that.
“It’s impossible to have a conversation with you anymore,” he scoffs. “Anytime someone says something you have no answer to, you threaten violence right away. If you enjoy fucking her that much, it’s okay, man, just fucking say so.”
He’s about two words away from my temper exploding. What saves him is a click of a button that takes me to the next photo—one that captures my attention and drowns out everything else, including his voice.
It’s a photo of the traitor and the crybaby, from the day I captured them. Probably taken on a stative. To a random viewer, there’d be nothing special about it whatsoever. But I know better.
First of all, she has maybe three pictures of herself on that laptop, so that in itself makes it suspicious.
But I can also tell her smile is forced, and there’s tension in her posture and a sense of absence in her eyes.
This isn’t the face of a girl who wants a photo with her friend.
They’re both looking directly into the camera, but it’s almost like they’re just nervous bystanders. Like they’re not the main focus ...
There’s something in the grass behind them. A piece of metal.
I zoom in.
My pulse picks up, my heart hammering. Bile rises up my throat. My vision swims.
A data plate from a nuclear missile. That alone is a little improbable, but not impossible. We captured them not too far from the Rift. A stray fragment could have been thrown that far outward by the explosion.
The plate is blackened, heat-scorched, battered by the elements. But the coin-sized seal etched into the dull grey metal is still clearly visible. A make designed by the Dunnby Continuum. By the Continuum! Not Synechord. The Continuum!
We’ve been told that Synechord dropped the bombs to prevent the Continuum from gaining its territories. The Continuum’s official propaganda was, of course, that Synechord was losing and got desperate. Unofficially, we all knew Synechord did it as a last-ditch attempt to prevent a nuclear war.
We’ve all seen evidence of Synechord’s strike: pictures of their stealth bombers, pictures of debris of their make, scattered intel preceding Rift Day, pieced together after the fact ...
Even in our age of fake news and misinformation, nobody has ever doubted that Synechord created the Rift. I have never doubted it.
But where the hell did that data plate come from?
It can’t be here. Not this side of the Rift. It just can’t. Because if it is ... then the Continuum must have been involved somehow.
“Are you even listening to me?” Attila is in my face, pounding my shoulder.
“Fuck off.”
Something must register in my expression because his tone is sombre when he asks, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, my stomach churning and my mind reeling. “But I sure as shit intend to find out.”
I’m pacing around the courtyard, confusion and anger buzzing underneath my skin.
That crybaby fucker swore he’d tell me everything, and yet he kept this from me?
This! The single most world-changing, history-shattering piece of intel the world has seen since Rift Day!
People die every day trying to seek asylum in Synechord, whether by sea or across the Rift. Dozens get arrested every month for trying to establish contact! And he just sat on the knowledge that it may all be for nothing! That there might be something much darker going on than we all thought.
And so did that traitor bitch! Once again failing to understand that this is much bigger than her and her little problems!
They both lied to my fucking face.
How the fuck can they claim to be on our side while risking that this information dies with them?
Growling with rage, I punch the air.
How dare they?
Someone needs to bleed for this. Frozen to the spot, I keep turning my head from one cave’s entrance to another. I can’t fucking decide.
I roar, pissed off at myself now, too. I tear myself away and head for the crybaby’s cave, stomping.
But I lose all my steam before I reach the door. All that’s left behind is a strange, flat emptiness. I can’t muster enough enthusiasm to wrench the door open, storm in, and unleash my wrath on him. I’m just not fucking feeling it.
Fuck it all.
I might as well just go fuck the girl I’ve been neglecting.
But then, as my thoughts stray to my place and the masks I keep in my drawer, I get a better idea.
The door to my pad flies open as I burst in. My steps are loud on the rough stone floor, but not as loud as the female moans and the slaps of flesh against flesh.
Attila has the girl bent over my table, pounding into her from behind. His face is glazed, and his shirt sticks to his sweaty chest. His hand is tangled in her brown hair—I can see she cut it shorter like I wanted.
“What the fuck is this? Out! Both of you! Now! OUT!”
The girl tries to wiggle from underneath him, but Attila holds her in place.
“Two minutes, man,” he pants. “Then you can have her.”
I lunge without warning, tearing him away from her and tossing him to the ground.
“Get the fuck out!” I bark at the wide-eyed girl.
I don’t need to tell her twice. She gathers her scattered clothes and rushes out the door fast, but not before giving me a pleading, regretful look. Like she wants to ask whether I’ll seek her services again.
I won’t.
“What the fuck, Aron?” Attila picks himself off the ground just as the door slams behind her.
I let him zip himself up because fuck knows I don’t want his bare dick anywhere in the vicinity. But then I grab him by the collar and throw him against the natural stone wall.
“You’re forgetting your fucking place.” I’m right in his face, teeth bared. “Don’t make that mistake again.”
Anyone else would have to be scraped off my floor.
Attila only gets away with it because we met in the army.
We’ve been through too much together. He was a friend to me first, before I became the Necromancer and he became my second-in-command.
Old habits die hard. Too hard, sometimes—they may have to be helped to their grave. Just another damn thing to worry about.
“Fine, whatever.”
I let him go, and he scurries away, counting his blessings. I grab my mask and my knife and head out.