CHAPTER THREE
Miles showed his credentials to the guard at the entrance checkpoint and waited while the man processed him through the system.
The Federal Correctional Institution sat just outside Alexandria, about an hour's drive from his apartment. He'd made the trip without really deciding to, his hands steering the car while his thoughts stayed elsewhere. Yet on the other hand, he supposed he’d known he’d end up here before the week was out.
He wasn't sure why he was here. He knew Kane wouldn't give him straight answers. Kane never gave straight answers. Their previous conversations had been exercises in frustration, the man speaking in riddles and philosophical tangents that went nowhere useful. But Miles needed something...a something he couldn’t quite define.
He needed to have some sense of how much longer this would continue.
He needed to have at least a vague idea of how many more disciples were out there waiting to strike.
The guard handed back his credentials and gestured toward the metal detector. "Agent Sterling, right? You're here to see Kane?"
"That's right."
"Deputy Warden Holloway has told us to always give you top priority. So go on through; he’ll have someone escort you to the interview room."
Miles wasn’t sure how he felt about everyone in the prison knowing who he was, or how to feel about having “top priority” in a place like this.
Either way, he passed through security and collected his belongings on the other side.
A corrections officer appeared almost immediately, a stocky man in his thirties with close-cropped hair and a name tag that read Morrison.
"Agent Sterling." Morrison's tone carried a note of recognition. "This way, please."
They walked through a series of corridors, passing through locked doors that required Morrison's keycard to open.
Other guards nodded to Miles as they passed.
Everyone seemed to know who he was. He'd become the face of the Elementalist investigation whether he wanted that role or not.
The interviews, the press conferences, the documentary that had aired last month.
His face was everywhere now. And he hated every moment of it.
Morrison led him through a final door into a small interview room.
The space was maybe ten feet by twelve feet, with a metal table bolted to the floor and two chairs facing each other across it.
A thick window of reinforced glass occupied one wall, allowing guards in the observation room to monitor the interview.
"He'll be here in a few minutes," Morrison said. "We'll have two guards stationed outside the door and three in observation. If you need anything or want to end the interview, just signal through the window."
Miles nodded and Morrison left, locking the door behind him. The click of the lock sent a small spike of anxiety through Miles's chest. He forced himself to breathe slowly and focused on the open space visible through the observation window. He wasn’t sealed or trapped. Just secured.
The question that had driven him here kept turning over in his thoughts.
There were 118 elements on the periodic table.
They'd stopped seven disciples so far. Seven out of potentially 111 more if Kane had been thorough in his recruitment.
Could there really be that many? The logistics alone seemed impossible.
Finding 111 people willing to commit murder, training them, coordinating their activities across the country.
But maybe it wasn't 111. Maybe it was twenty.
Or thirty. A more manageable number but still enough to keep the killing going for years.
How many minds had Kane infected with his twisted philosophy before his arrest?
The lock clicked and the door swung open, breaking up his thoughts. Two guards entered first, followed by Gabriel Kane in handcuffs and leg shackles. The guards positioned him in the chair across from Miles, securing his restraints to a metal loop welded to the table.
Kane looked thinner than the last time Miles had seen him. His orange prison jumpsuit hung loose on his frame, and his hair had grown longer, touching his shoulders. But his eyes were the same. Sharp and intelligent and carrying an expression that suggested he found the entire situation amusing.
The guards stepped back and took positions on either side of the door. Kane settled into his chair and looked at Miles with what might have been genuine pleasure.
"Dr. Sterling,” Kane said dryly. “What an unexpected delight."
"It's Agent Sterling now. Mostly thanks to you."
"Is it? I thought we'd moved past such formalities." Kane shifted slightly, the chains rattling with the movement. "You look tired, Agent Sterling. How have you been sleeping?"
The question hit harder than it should have. Miles kept his expression neutral. "We need to talk about your disciples."
"Do we? I would think we've covered that topic quite thoroughly in our previous conversations. I have nothing to add to my earlier statements."
"How many are there?"
Kane tilted his head slightly. "How many what?"
"You know what. How many people did you recruit? How many are still out there following your instructions?"
"Instructions." Kane seemed to savor the word as if he’d just bitten into a juicy steak. "Such an interesting choice of language. As if I were some kind of cult leader giving orders to mindless followers. The reality is far more nuanced than that, I'm afraid."
"Stop playing games,” Miles said. “I need numbers."
"Numbers." Kane smiled. "Always the scientist, even now. Wanting to quantify, measure, and reduce everything to data points. Tell me, Dr. Sterling, have the nightmares been quantifiable? Can you measure the weight of watching a man suffocate while you do nothing to help?"
Miles's hands clenched under the table. He felt exposed. Vulnerable. "How do you know about what happened in Seattle?"
"Easy! The news coverage was quite detailed.
Poor Mario Stevens, dead from an asthma attack in a sealed environmental chamber.
And you were there with him, weren't you?
Trapped in that small space, running out of air, watching him die.
" Kane leaned forward as much as his restraints allowed.
"How long did it take? The dying, I mean.
Did it feel like hours or was it mercifully quick? "
"We're not talking about that," Miles snapped.
"But we should. It's relevant to your question about numbers.
You want to know how many disciples remain because you're trying to calculate your odds of survival.
You're wondering how many more environmental chambers or sealed spaces or oxygen-deprived deaths you'll have to witness before this ends. "
"That's not what this is about."
"Isn't it?" Kane sat back, his expression shifting to something that looked almost sympathetic.
"You're afraid, Dr. Sterling. Not of death exactly, but of the process.
Of suffocation. Of slowly running out of air while you're still conscious enough to understand what's happening.
Mario Stevens showed you exactly what that looks like. "
Miles forced himself to stay calm. "How many disciples did you recruit?"
"The periodic table has 118 elements. Surely you've done that math already."
"So there are 111 more?"
"I didn't say that,” he said with a chuckle.
Kane studied him with those sharp eyes. “You're the one making assumptions.
But let's say for the sake of argument that I recruited extensively.
That I found brilliant, damaged individuals in cities across this country and showed them a truth they couldn't unsee.
That I gave them purpose and direction and the tools they needed to complete their work. How would that make you feel?"
"It would make me more determined to stop them."
"Would it? Or would it make you realize how futile your efforts are? You can't be everywhere at once, Dr. Sterling. You can't prevent every murder. And each time you fail, each time another body is discovered, you'll wonder if maybe this time will be the one that finally breaks you."
Miles met Kane's gaze directly. "You're trying to get in my head."
"I'm already in your head. I've been there since you first read my manifestos and started connecting the elemental murders.
You've spent so much time studying me, trying to understand my philosophy, that you can probably predict what I'm thinking better than most people in your life.
" Kane's voice dropped lower. "The question is whether that knowledge is helping you or destroying you. "
"I'm not like you. Not at all."
"Oh, of course you're not. You have empathy and conscience and all those human limitations that make you vulnerable.
But you also have something I find fascinating.
You have the ability to see patterns that others miss.
You think like I do in some ways, which is why you've been so successful at tracking my disciples. "
"If I think like you, then I know you're not going to answer my questions directly."
"There's the scientist again. Always looking for concrete data.
" Kane shifted in his chair, the chains rattling softly.
"Very well. I'll give you something concrete.
The work will continue whether I'm here or free.
Whether you catch ten more disciples or fifty.
The ideas I've planted can't be killed by arrests or prison sentences.
They'll grow and spread and manifest in ways you can't anticipate. "
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer you're going to get." Kane's expression changed, becoming more serious. "But I will tell you this, Dr. Sterling. You can do all the predicting and analyzing you want but you’ll never be able to get ahead of it.”
"When will the next one hit?"
"A stern, brave question! But of course, I can’t tell you.
Besides, even if you knew, there’s no way to truly stop it.
You could arrest fifty disciples tomorrow and there would still be more waiting to complete their work.
" Kane leaned forward again. "You can't win this, Dr. Sterling.
The best you can hope for is survival. And based on how tired you look, how the panic attacks are affecting you, how you're probably drinking too much and not sleeping enough, I'm not sure how much longer you can sustain even that. "
Miles stood abruptly, his chair scraping against the floor. The guards at the door tensed but didn't move. He looked down at Kane, at the man who had orchestrated so much death and suffering, and felt something shift in his understanding.
He'd thought he knew what Kane was: a killer and a manipulator.
A brilliant but deranged former professor who'd built a cult around elemental philosophy.
But sitting here, seeing the depth of calculation behind those intelligent eyes, hearing the precision with which Kane had dissected his psychological state, Miles understood that Kane was something worse.
He was truly brilliant. Truly depraved. And truly capable of orchestrating horrors that would continue long after his death.
"We're done here," Miles said, more to the guard than to Kane.
"Already? But we were having such a productive conversation." Kane smiled. "Do come back soon, Dr. Sterling. I do enjoy our talks. They're the most intellectually stimulating part of my incarceration."
Miles signaled to the guards, and they moved to escort him out. He didn't look back at Kane as he left the room, but he could feel the man's eyes on him until the door closed.
Morrison met him in the corridor and walked him back through the security checkpoints.
The return journey felt longer than the trip in.
Miles's thoughts churned with everything Kane had said and everything he'd left unsaid.
The taunts about Seattle. The refusal to provide concrete numbers.
The promise that the work would continue regardless of how many disciples they caught.
Morrison unlocked the final door and Miles stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. He stood there for a moment, breathing fresh air and trying to shake the feeling that Kane had gotten exactly what he wanted from their conversation.
Miles walked to his car, got in, and sat with his hands on the steering wheel.
He'd come here looking for answers. For some sense of how much longer this would continue.
Instead he'd gotten confirmation of his worst fears.
Kane's disciples would keep killing. And Kane himself, locked away in a federal prison, was still the most dangerous and deranged person Miles had ever encountered.