Welcome to Chapter 17.

Before I start, I would to take this moment to pay heartfelt tribute to a dear friend of mine, an editor of the early chapters of this series and an altogether remarkable and thoroughly decent human being. AmerthystForester, or Ames to those who knew her, was one of those rare people who never had an unkind word to say about anyone, was loyal to her friends beyond measure, and struggled against challenges that most of us will never know, yet remained as one of the very best people I have ever known. She was ever a source of confidence and support when my writing career is in its infancy. For those of you who enjoy my work, it is safe to say that its longevity is largely down to her. As with most online friendships, people tend to lose touch, and that is what I had assumed had happened with Ames and me. I learned recently that I was wrong and that she had, in fact, passed away.

So to Ames, it was an honor, a pleasure, and a privilege that transcends words to have known you. One of the true accolades of my life was to call you a friend and to be called the same by you. Goodnight, sleep well, and dream good dreams in your well-earned respite. Rest in peace. You will be remembered with the fondest of affection for as long as I am around to remember you.

As always, my deepest thanks to the editors of this chapter. You are carrying on the work of one of the greats.

Now, on with the story.

********

I'm not entirely sure if there was a door or something in the Conclave's vaulted cathedral that slammed open on my arrival, but every single one of the thousands of eyes in the enormous building snapped to me as I stormed in, dragging in the battered, bruised and bloodied, but still breathing body of Sterling behind me.

I had spent hours venting my anger out on him. Lots and lots of real-world hours. Sterling, forced to stay in the mindscape by my complete capture of his Palace, had endured torture the likes of which hadn't been seen since the dark ages.

Taking his memories had been easy; I had all the evidence I needed. Jeeves had simply placed his hand on the walls of Sterling's library and copied everything held within. I now had access to his first-hand memories of every single person he had attacked. And he had attacked a lot of people, hundreds of them, over his long life. His theater had allowed him to maintain the ruse of his young age, but with that now spread across the ground of his city, I was able to see that this man was hundreds of years old. Possibly the oldest Evo I had met.

"What is the meaning of this?!?" The Archon bellowed indignantly and furiously as I tossed the limp body of my assailant into the wooden base of his throne's dais. Fiona and Jerry, also in attendance, ran towards their friend in an attempt to shield him from my obvious wrath as Uri and Marco, with a group of other men, stepped closer to me.

I didn't bother answering Thomas, turning to my mentor and his boss instead. "Remember at the party? Both of you telling me about the attacks on other Evos?" They nodded mutely. "Well, here he is. He tried his luck on me and failed!"

Both of them turned to look at Sterling. Fiona and Jerry furrowed their brows, suddenly a lot more cautious in the defense of the man but not making any move to distance themselves from him. They looked to be frozen in that moment of uncertainty. What they knew of the man was totally at odds with what I was telling them; of course, they had no way of knowing about Sterling's theater, and the act that he had been putting on since before either of them had been born.

"You have no right...." Bellowed Thomas as he stepped down off his throne.

"I swear to God, if you finish that sentence, you won't live long enough to regret it!" I growled at him, turning to give him the full measure of my furious gaze.

"Pete," Uri said carefully, his hands raised as he stepped forward to defuse the quickly building tension. "Do you have any proof of these accusations? We would need to see your memories again, if you don't mind, to be able to verify your story."

"No need," I snorted. "I took the liberty of freeing up his memories for you. Browse them at your pleasure! There is more than enough evidence in there!"

Every eye in the building moved to Sterling, not just the people in the central chamber but every single eye in the whole complex. I could see him try to shrink away from the scrutiny, but with his walls reduced to a pile of smoldering ruins and his mindscape Avatar currently locked away in my own city, there was nothing he could do to stop them. His memories, every single one of them ... well, almost... was like an open book to the thousands of minds currently going through them.

One by one, the faces around me changed. Morphing from doubtful curiosity to surprise, to shock, and then, finally, to horror. Fiona and Jerry backed away quickly. "And for those of you in the cheap seats!..." I shouted out, my booming voice echoing around the cathedral as I swung my arm in a wide circle around me. The ghosts of Sterling's victims, all of them, faded into existence in a large circle around us. A wave of gasps and cries filled the halls as Evos started to recognize the people that Sterling had hunted. "Do any of these people look familiar?" I finished, leveling my gaze at a pale-faced Archon.

The Archon was looking around the host of ghosts, recognizing most, if not all of them. His jaw hung loose as his mind struggled to accept what his eyes were telling him. My own eyes paused on the faces of Matthias and Jacques for a moment before continuing.

"Samantha?" The Archon stammered, stepping closer to one of the ghosts. "But... but... you were killed by inquisitors in the Athens attack."

"Apparently not," Marco said with a growing growl, as he stepped forward closer to Uri.

"Is he our mole?" Uri asked, his eyes narrowed at Sterling.

I shook my head. "No, he's not. He's just an opportunistic predator who preyed upon his own people to get more power. Sounds about par for the Conclave, doesn't it?" I snarled. "I'm done. Do with him what you wish." Thomas bristled as the ghosts faded into nothing.

I turned and made for the exit.

"It is not your place to dish out justice for this Order!" The Archon's voice boomed authoritatively and challengingly after me.

I froze. Every eye in the room seemed to have momentarily lost interest in Sterling for a second and was now resting on me. I spun back around and stormed back toward Thomas; my eyes were practically burning with rage. Three men, ones I didn't recognize, stood themselves between the retreating Archon and me. With a simple flick of my fingers, all three of them were tossed effortlessly to the side, unhurt but not in any rush to be that stupid again. I bore down on the shrinking Thomas.

"Not my place? Not my place??" I shouted into his face. "And whose place is it? Yours? A pathetic, weak excuse for a man who would rather pretend there is no problem at all than go out and deal with it? What the fuck are you going to do about it? Pretend it isn't happening while you make yourself comfortable on your oversized chair? You seem to mistake me for someone who works for you, who is beneath you in this joke of a club you've got here, so let me clue you into something you seem to have backward in your ignorant little skull! You are in no position to challenge me! Not in principle, not in ethics, not in rules, and certainly not in power! Every single bad thing that happens to me can be traced back to 'your order,' and I'm looking right at you as the man responsible! Something tells me that is not a thread that you want me tugging on! But I fucking promise you, challenge me again, and I will bring this whole rotten place down and fucking bury you in it!"

The Archon's eyes danced furiously, but neither of us failed to notice that nobody, not a single Evo among the thousands present, came to his defense.

"Only members of our order are allowed to dispense justice out to other members," he spluttered weakly.

"And I brought him here for you to do just that. I could have just killed him and been done with it. But mark my words; the next time a road in my investigation leads me back to you, I won't be so diplomatic when I hold you personally responsible, and you won't be so healthy when I am finished. Am I making myself clear?"

"I don't think..."

"AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?!?" I was well past the point of playing nice by this point.

Thomas gulped hard as another wave of energy washed out of me. The building around us shook, and the nervous murmurs of the rest of the congregation echoed off the shaking walls. "I understand." He said weakly, his eyes drifting downward and his shoulders slumping.

"Good! In the future, unless you have something useful to say, I suggest that you shut - and I cannot stress this enough - THE FUCK UP!"

I turned without another word and marched back toward the exit, making sure to cast a glance at Uri on the way out. One that only he saw. One that told him there was a lot more for us to talk about.

********

Matthias was running.

His footing was firm, and his breathing was steady; he may not have ever been the fastest man in the world, but his stamina was second to none. Being an Evo did, after all, have its perks. He could keep this up all night. If they were going to kill him, they were going to have to catch him first, and he was not planning on making that easy for them.

The thousands of meters of open space, the Place du Parvis, raced by, one footfall after another, one deep, steady, heavy, measured breath after another; he was gaining ground, growing the distance between himself and his pursuers. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder; it was not hard to spot them. Even against the shadowy outline of Notre Dame Cathedral, the ominous white auras of the men chasing him could clearly be seen.

He let a smile creep onto his lips. He was losing them.

The smile was only in place for a few seconds, however, before it vanished from his face. Five more men, each with a glowing white aura, each armed with revolvers and a saber, rounded the corner in front of him.

"Merde!" Matthias spat to himself, almost losing his footing on the rain-swept Parisian streets as he skidded to the right and started running along the northern bank of the Seine. If he could make it to one of the three bridges over the river before he was cut off, he would be able to vanish into the city. If not, he would have to take his chances with the murky, icy waters of the River itself. February was not a great choice for a swim at the best of times, but the winter of 1888 would be remembered by many of the people in the French Capital as a particularly bitter and cold one.

He needed to make it to the Champs de Mars and the base of Gustave Eiffel's wrought iron monstrosity. It was barely half built and already an eye sore on the skyline of his beloved city. The powers that be had said that it would be a monument to match Big Ben or the Colosseum as if anyone would put those two buildings in the same category. But to him, it would just look like a giant dick sticking up into the Parisian sky. The Eiffel Tower was a monument to self-aggrandizement and hubris, but one he had to get to. The lives of thousands of his fellow Evos depended on it. Perhaps even the future of the Conclave itself!

He cast another quick glance over his shoulder. The unexpected appearance of the second group of his attackers had caused him to pick up the pace; he was starting to tire. But more concerning, the need to suddenly change directions had allowed the first group to cut the corner of the Place du Parvis and gain back all the ground they had lost since he was ambushed on the steps of Notre Dame Cathedral.

His heavy breaths fogged the air in front of his face; he could feel the steam rising off the sweat that beaded against the frozen night air, just a few more yards, and he would be over the river.

A shot rang out against the silence of the night, and something zipped past his head. He could feel the closeness of it. He instinctively ducked away from the sound, losing the rhythm of his pace and slowing down dramatically. Another shot rang out, then another. One thudded into the corner of a building to his right, and the second skipped off the floor a dozen yards in front of him and a little to his left.

He darted to his left, aiming for the gap in the low stone wall that marked the opening of the bridge and off this cursed mid-river Island. They had been stupid, or at least more than a little cocky. Meeting on the steps of the building that had once served as the Inquisition headquarters for all of France, the building that marked the height of papal authority over his country. Yes, it had been centuries since it had served that purpose, now, it was a place of worship like any other, but there was something poetic about having the meeting there. The meeting that had confirmed the lies of the Conclave leadership and the true identity of those now hunting him.

Claude, his contact, had been hit by the very first shot. Matthias could still see that brief look of shock on his face before his eyes rolled back, and he slumped to the ground, his brains splattered all over the ancient stone against which he had been leaning. Matthias had reached down, grabbed the envelope from his pocket, knowing it contained the information he needed, had turned, and ran for his life.

He made it to the opening of the bridge, grabbing hold of one of the cast-iron oil lamps that illuminated the bridge to swing himself around the corner and kept running. Something hit him in the side. It felt like a cricket bat had come out of nowhere and smacked into the bottom of his ribs. It didn't hurt so much as it just knocked some of the wind out of him. He didn't slow down; he kept running.

Each breath started to become more labored, and the feeling of a wet warmth started spreading down his side. He didn't bother checking; he knew he had been hit. It was funny that the shot that had hit him was the one he hadn't heard being fired. He tried to twist around to look again, but this time a sharp, intense, soul-searing bolt of pain ripped through his side.

"Nope, fuck that. Keep running. You can deal with it later!" He thought to himself as he fled.

Somehow, he made it over the bridge. A few more shots were fired after him, but all of them were wildly misaimed. It would seem that his pursuers were running out of steam faster than he was. He allowed a small smile to flicker onto his face in self-congratulations. Matthias was a Parisian, born and bred, the Inquisition had caught him out in the open, but these narrow streets, winding alleys, dark corners, and late-night saloons were his territory. He could lose himself in them in a heartbeat.

And that is precisely what he did.

He rounded the first corner he came to, then, while still out of sight, darted right into an alley, ran along it for a few dozen yards, then bolted left again onto the next street before ducking through the door of one of Paris's many late night burlesque houses.

He was already at the bar, sipping on a cognac, his breathing steady and his face the mask of calmness when the white-aura'd men ran past the window. He allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. But with the conscious lowering of his adrenaline came the spike of pain in his side. He was in more trouble than he had originally thought. He could already feel the clinic in his city working overtime to stop the bleeding and repair the damage done by the bullet. He cursed under his breath as he swallowed down the warming liquid.

He had to wait. They would give up soon. They couldn't possibly know who he was supposed to meet, let alone where, and Jacques would be at the tower all night, if necessary. Only at sunrise, if Matthias hadn't shown, would he know for sure that something had gone wrong. He had his own orders to follow then.

Matthias would wait, he had at least four hours til sun-up, and the Champs de Mars was barely a twenty-minute walk away. Two hours here would be enough to give his body time to heal a little and ensure the Inquisitors had given up the hunt for him, but still give him plenty of time to make the walk to the Tower.

If he didn't make it, the world would be thrown into its first fully-industrial world war within a matter of a few decades. The first domino would be toppled, so to speak, and millions of lives would be lost. A lot of them would be Evo lives. It would be a war that would put to shame the barbarism of the American Civil war and would completely eclipse the cruelty of the British wars in their South African territories.

He shuddered at the thought.

At the appropriate time, he stepped out of the saloon, leaning forward to light his cigarettey while subtly taking the opportunity to check the deserted streets for any sign of glowing white men. There was none. They were gone. He started walking.

There was nothing simple about this part of the journey, however, not since that bullet had hit him. Whatever it had done to him, it was in there pretty deep and had caused a lot more damage than his adrenaline-fuelled escape had allowed him to feel. He winced against the pain as he brought his hand up to dab against the wound, pulling away to inspect the mess on his fingers. The blood wasn't just red, but it was a thick, dark, almost black color, and he knew what that meant. He needed a hospital, all of which were doubtlessly under Inquisitor surveillance. More than that, he needed one now, but if he went now, even if he could get past his assailants, he would miss his rendezvous, and countless lives depended on him making it to that on time. This was one meeting that he couldn't afford to be late for.

Another sharp jolt of pain made up his mind for him. It was too late. The damage was done, and no amount of medical intervention was going to change that. At least the four glasses of cognac and a significant amount of power had done a little toward numbing what would have otherwise been a crippling amount of pain. He stumbled onwards into the Parisian night.

Forty minutes later, barely able to stay upright, the blood draining from his extremities, his shirt saturated in his own blood, and barely able to see the half-constructed Eiffel Tower overhead, Matthias made it to the bank of Seine on the far end of the Champs de Mars.

"Mon Dieu, Matthias. What happened?" Jacques gasped as he jumped up from the bench he had been sitting on for the past six hours.

Matthias opened his mouth to answer, but a bubble of blood burst from his lips instead, followed by a cough. He pitched forward and collapsed onto the frozen wet floor. Jacques, his friend of almost thirty years, rushed over to him, kneeling next to him and lifting his head onto his lap.

"It was... an ambush," Matthias gasped against the pain of simply breathing.

"Claude?" Jacques asked hopefully, but Matthias only shook his head.

The dying man slid his trembling hand into his left-hand pocket, pulling out the envelope before pushing it into his friend's hands and curling his fingers around it. "Tell Annie... I love her... and I died for... my duty... and for... our children." Jacques nodded, his eyes tearing up as he watched his friend of so many years fade away before his eyes. Matthias looked up at him, his eyes glossing over and losing focus. "Take it..." Matthias murmured, "... before it's too... late."

"No, Matt, no. I can't. I won't."

"Do it... now."

Jacques sighed, still holding the envelope in one hand and resting his other on the forehead of his dying friend. It was the last rite for dying Evos; their powers would be drained by the person closest to them; at least, that was the hope. It was rare for Evos to die of anything other than old age these days. Taking their powers was a way to pass their strength on to those who would still need it, to stay in the fight, so to speak. It was the one duty no Evo ever hoped to have to carry out on another.

But Jaques did it. He drained his friend, he emptied his library, and he pulled every single shred of knowledge and power out of a man he would have died to protect but no longer could. The closest thing to a brother he had ever had.

He then watched as Matthias slipped away. The fog of his last long breath drifted into nothingness in the cold night air.

Jacques took a deep breath and stood. His new memories, especially of Matthias's flight from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, had been as incredible as they had been heroic. He could see, in his mind's eye, the moment when his friend had willingly chosen to sacrifice his life for the cause for which they were now fighting. He would carry those memories for the rest of his life, and then, once this war against the rot within the Conclave had been won, he would donate them to the archives so that all would be able to understand what true heroism looked like.

He said a silent prayer over the body of his friend and then turned and headed toward the city center. The next train was due in an hour, and he had to be in London by the next afternoon at the very latest.

He trudged his way toward the glow of light from the city. Snow began to fall, quickly layering the ground in a thin dusting of soft, crisp whiteness. Jacques had always loved the snow; there was something clean and pure about it. His trudging was now sung back to him as his footsteps crunched against the snow.

But, he quickly came to realize, his were not the only footsteps echoing around him.

He slowed, his hand in one pocket thumbing over the envelope that Matthias had given his life to transport, while the other hand in the other pocket fingered at the butt of his Enfield Mk. I pistol. It wasn't the most powerful of weapons, but it would do the job at close range.

Taking a leaf from Matthias's book, he slowed to light a cigarette, taking the opportunity to cast a look behind him. A lone man was walking closer, not really paying any attention to him nor surrounded by that tell-tale white aura. Jacques relaxed his grip on his weapon.

Yet there was something oddly familiar about the man, like he had seen him before. In his mid to late forties, maybe even his fifties, his greying hair was offset by the well-worn look of his face. Deep wrinkles were set in around his eyes as if the man spent far too much time faking a smile.

"Bonjour," Jacques smiled politely, stepping aside to let the man pass.

He barely noticed that the man had something in his hand. Or at least he didn't notice until the man leaped forward and drove the sharp blade of that something into the soft flesh under Jacques's jaw, through the cavity of his mouth, and into his brain.

Jacques gargled around the blood that was quickly flowing down his throat as his hand frantically scrambled in his pocket for a grip on the pistol. "Ah, ah, ah," the familiar-looking man said in a voice that sounded just as familiar as his face still looked. "We won't be having any of that."

The man reached into Jacques's pocket and removed the pistol, giving it a quick look before tucking it into his own. He then rummaged through Jacques's other pocket and pulled out the envelope. Jacques's eyes widened as the man glanced at it, turned it over in his hands, and tossed it casually over his shoulder.

The only hope of averting a war that could destroy the continent, cost millions of lives, and expose the betrayal at the heart of the Conclave, landed in the frigid, midnight-black waters of the Seine and slowly floated out of sight.

"I will make this quick, I promise, my brother." The man said as he pressed his hand onto Jacques' forehead. The last thought that passed through Jacques' mind was the horror of recognition as he finally realized who his murderer was, the utter savagery the fates had shown him by letting him be killed by someone who wasn't even involved in this fight, and the sorrow he felt that Matthias's memories had been stolen along with his, never to be seen by those they loved most. Those they gave their lives to defend.

Jacques was drained, his palace destroyed, and his library emptied. The knife was savagely ripped to the side. He let out a slight gasp of pain as his throat was opened, and the familiar-looking man whistled as he turned and disappeared into the night.

Jacques felt the last of his life slip away. The darkness faded over his vision as his body was slowly covered in snow.

Jacques always loved the snow.

********

Uri blinked his eyes clear and looked around the mindscape. It had taken days of me sifting through Sterling's memories before I found this one; it had barely been a hunch to start with. With Sterling being easily old enough to have been alive at the time the Philadelphia accords were signed, I had started going through his memories to see what he knew of them. It turned out he knew nothing. He didn't have a clue about them. More than that, he had no knowledge whatsoever about the communication between the Conclave and the Inquisition, and although he had a vague understanding of High-Inquisitors, the existence of the Royals, let alone rogue ones, would have come as much of a surprise to him as it had to me. Not being put off by this, and with Sterling holding the cumulative knowledge and memories of all of his victims, I had started to browse them to see if they had any better information. It was during that investigation that I stumbled across this memory.

It wasn't just flashing images, sounds, and smells; it was more than the recollection of a series of events. I could feel what Matthias had felt; the fear, the adrenaline, the cold air on his skin, and, more importantly, the abject mistrust of the Conclave. He had died trying to pass information on to Jacques, information concerning what he called "the rot" within the Conclave. Jacques was to take that information to London where, both men hoped, it would expose the truth behind the betrayal by their leaders and prevent what I assumed would later become the First World War. They had failed, and they had given their lives in the process. When Sterling had ambushed and murdered Jacques, he had stolen his memories, along with the ones Jacques had taken from the dying Matthias, and it was those memories that I had just finished playing for Uri.

We were both in the mindscape, and although we were actually in completely different parts of the world, this was the closest thing to teleconferencing that Evos had. "So, we aren't the only people to have stumbled onto this threat," Uri nodded slowly. "At least one other group did in Paris, sometime in February 1888. The hostile faction of the Inquisition tried to stop them, but they got away, only for Sterling to use that attack as a disguise for his attack on them. This could be helpful."

I nodded for him to continue. There was something about reliving that memory that made me feel unbearably cold, and I had watched it a dozen times in the past few days to make sure I had my information straight, and each time had left me with the need to warm myself up.

"It shouldn't be hard to find out who Jacques and Matthias were, and Claude, we may even be able to trace their movements back to find out where they got this information and, ideally, what it was. But I wouldn't hold out too much hope."

"No, I'm guessing that whoever else was involved with this group was killed too. Otherwise, it wouldn't have disappeared." I agreed.

Uri nodded again. "But there should be some record of them in our archives. Who they were, what they were working on, and maybe retracing their steps would be a good way to find out what they knew. Again, there may be people still alive who knew them. I will look into this 'Annie' as well. The other thing worth looking into is why they were so keen to get to London. What was there that was so important in 1888?"

"The entrance to the Conclave Cathedral?"

Uri shook his head, his eyes staring into the middle distance as he thought. "No, there is an entrance to the Conclave in Paris, close to the Bastille. They would have known about that. There has to be something else. I will see what I can find."

"What about Sterling?"

"Oh, he will be mined for information, and then he will be dealt with appropriately."

"No, I meant his body. I dragged his mind to the Conclave. The rest of him is still sitting on my kitchen floor. Given a choice, I would rather not keep him there."

"Oh, right, yes. I will send Fiona and Jerry to pick him up. They have been briefed on the situation already, and they are chasing down some leads."

"Anything you want to share?"

"Not yet They haven't found anything, but I will let you know if they do."

I narrowed my eyes at him. There was still something he wasn't telling me. "And Marco?"

"I have Marco checking in on all the people who made it out of the party."

There was something.... Off... about the way he said that. "You haven't told him about the rest of it yet, have you?"

Uri arched an eyebrow at me. "I will inform him when I think it's necessary. Fiona and Jerry needed to know to complete their task. Marco doesn't need to know anything to check in on your local members, but I will bring him up to speed if the need arises."

"I thought you said you trusted them."

"No, I said that trust was a rare commodity these days. You assumed I trusted them because I was bringing them into the loop. None of them will know more than they absolutely need to do their jobs."

"And that includes me."

"I'm glad to see that you are learning."

I took a deep breath and, once again, fought the urge to call him a cunt. "Fine! But I hope you know that works both ways."

"We shall see. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I will smooth things over with the Archon."

"I'm overjoyed. Can't you tell?" I deadpanned him.

"And I'm sure Marco will be in touch soon," Uri continued as if I had said nothing. "Most of the more recent of Sterlings victims were in his area. He was personally involved in the hunt. I'm certain he will be grateful. Let me know if you find anything out about the flight." He finished.

"We shall see." I echoed back to him, mirroring the disapproving stare that he leveled at me.

"I will speak to you soon, Pete." And with that, he severed the connection. I growled quietly at the empty spot in the mindscape before letting it fade away and returning to my apartment.

Sterling was still sitting on my kitchen floor, leaning up against the island counter where I had left him. To the outside observer, it looked like he was just daydreaming; there wasn't a mark on him. The battered and bloodied version of him I had dumped onto the floor of the Cathedral had suffered almost unimaginable horrors, but his physical body was completely unharmed.

Imagine if someone were capable of making you feel the sensation of being burned alive without ever actually burning you, making you feel what it was like to have your fingernails ripped off or your toes crushed with a hammer or having entire strips of skin peeled off you, having your eyes gouged out, your teeth pulled, and every single one of your nerve endings found and pierced by a red hot needle, but had done so without ever actually touching you. That is what I had done to Sterling. That and so much worse. The wounds visible to the members of the Conclave were wounds inflicted upon his psyche, not his body. I had broken that man in every way it was possible to break someone.

I sat on one of the stools and just looked at him.

It was strange how the whole Evo mindscape thing worked. I hadn't really dragged his mind into the Cathedral. To do that, I would have had to have taken it out of his body, and although I wasn't entirely sure if that was possible or not, it hadn't seemed productive. Parts of that mind were needed to keep his body alive, and although having a catatonic stranger on my kitchen floor might not be a good look, having a dead one there would be significantly harder to explain. Instead, what I had basically done was create a link between the Cathedral and Sterling's mind. By interacting with the link, the Evos in the Conclave were able to interact directly with Sterling's mind. Or what he had left of it, anyway.

There was a level of disgust and disdain in my feelings toward the man that burned right to the core of me every time I looked at him. The way he had attacked me, his motivations, and his methods had been incredibly personal and intimate. Thinking back to the time we had spent in his illusion, there were only a limited number of ways he could have gained access to the information that he had. Knowing about Uri could be as easily explained as seeing us talking at the party. If a predator of Sterling's caliber had been able to hunt me successfully, then Uri would have been another logical target. More concerning were the references, albeit brief ones, to the nurses. The only way he could have gotten them was by reading my memories. He had, after all, been inside my city, which meant that he had as much access to me as I had to him. What worried me was that I felt nothing. It was only a lazy guess about my parents that had caught him out, but if he had access to the information about Becky and Philippa, how did he not have access to the details of my relationship with my parents? Hell, he had literally walked past effigies to them on his way to the power plant. If he had gotten that one detail right, I couldn't honestly say I would have snapped out of it.

Of everything that had happened, after watching the dozens of times he had ambushed, tricked, or simply attacked other Evos, all of them much more experienced than me, and being successful, after all the things I had seen and experienced, that was the part that made me feel most uncomfortable.

It was the first time I had been made to feel truly vulnerable since I had come to grips with my powers.

It was not a feeling I was fond of.

I stood up and gave Sterling a kick. Did it serve a purpose? Not at all. Did it help alleviate that feeling of vulnerability? Not even a little. Did it make me feel a little better? Yes. Yes, it did. So I kicked him again.

I spent the next few hours staring at him, mulling over everything in my head. Not just everything that had happened during his failed attempt at murdering me, but everything. Faye, the party, the Inquisition, the Conclave, the Sect, The Royals, Marco, Uri, Charlotte, Montreaux, Miguel's revelations, Agatha's confirmation of at least part of it, the investigation into the rest, Faye's residence in my city, my new friendly neighborhood mole. All of it.

I felt the weight of it all resting firmly on my shoulders. A weight that was usually borne by armies or institutions, or at least world leaders. I was a twenty-year-old kid from the back end of nowhere, and I was suddenly playing the most dangerous game imaginable with the most dangerous people on earth.

What the fuck was I doing?

There was a part of me, no matter how small, no matter how quiet that voice whispered, that wished that Sterling's illusion was my reality. Just myself and my own well-being to worry about. No power, no responsibilities, no obligations, no danger. Just me. I could pretend I was Billy Badass all I liked, but when it came down to it, I was fucking scared.

I kicked Sterling again. It helped a little.

I took a deep breath, stood from my stool, and rolled my neck as I turned to look out of the huge living room window and over the valley beyond. The sun was starting to set over the western mountains. It was hard to fathom how a single day could seem so long. I had only met with Uri that morning, I had only arrived back from Malaga, and met the Sect yesterday, yet both of those points in time felt like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was because I literally had the lives of three or four dozen other people rattling around in my head. They weren't the sort of memories I would confuse with my own, they weren't always there, but I seemed able to access and browse them at leisure. Those memories, along with the rest of Sterling's, would be something I would spend a great deal of time working through soon. Perhaps it was because of all that extra power I had absorbed. I hadn't gone into my city to look for myself, but Jeeves had told me that a new power plant had sprung up close to the center of my city, making my already unimaginable power reserves even less imaginable. Whatever it was, it was messing with my concept of time and my concept of time was already more than a little sketchy due to the dilating effects of my city and my bunker. This was just making it worse.

Fuck! I needed a drink.

I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Call it experience, call it an overabundance of caution, call it whatever you like, but this time, I let my mind reach out to see who was on the other side before I made my way over to open it.

"Hi, Pete," Fiona smiled nervously as I opened the door for them. Jerry nodded his greeting from next to her. "Uri sent us."

"That was quick," I said with my best fake smile as I stepped aside to let them in.

"We were in the area," Jerry answered as they both stepped past me.

"That doesn't sound ominous at all."

"It's nothing to worry about," Fiona said, trying her best to sound reassuring. "We needed to chase up a few leads from the party."

"Oh? I thought Uri said Marco was doing that."

"No, Marco is following up with the other guests," Jerry answered again. They seemed to be taking turns speaking. It was very off-putting. "We were looking into the venue and the aftermath. Did you notice that there was nothing on the news about it at all? One hundred and forty-something people were killed, and nothing. Even if they blamed the whole thing on a gas leak, covering it up to that level shouldn't be possible. So we are trying to find out how." They were both standing around - and looking down at - Sterling. "Jesus, I can't believe he had the wool so firmly pulled over everyone's eyes."

"Fucking asshole," Fiona spat. "Can he move, or are we going to have to carry him?"

"Sterling, get up and follow these two," I said to the living corpse that had once been my attacker. There honestly wasn't much left of him by this point. The vengeful God who I had read about in the bible as a child would have beamed with pride or seethed in jealous fury at the fire and brimstone I had rained down on Sterling. It was the sort of stuff that would have given Freddie Krueger nightmares.

Perhaps the most concerning part of my current state of mind was that thinking of all the immense pain and unimaginable suffering I had inflicted on Sterling; I regretted none of it.

Sterling pulled himself robotically and absently to his feet.

"I honestly thought he had been killed in the attack," Fiona said, staring at the man she had last seen after his victory over her in the duel. "I mean, it's pretty clear now. He just shifted his appearance to something different and fucked off before the attack started. When we couldn't account for him afterward, we assumed the worst. I can't believe I actually grieved for this piece of shit."

"I just can't get over the way he killed so many of us," Jerry agreed. "I was pretty shocked by the twelve left in those vegetative states, but he found a way to completely disguise himself from the rest of us and then used that ability to murder other Evos. Its..."

"Cannibalism," Fiona finished. "He hunted and fed on his own. And all in the name of growing his own power. There is nothing worst than that"

I refrained from pointing out the parallels between Sterling and the way the Conclave had historically sought power.

Jerry rested a hand on her shoulder. "Let's get him out of here and back to base. Then we can forget that he ever existed."

Fiona nodded softly before turning back to me. "Uri told us about your investigation. If there is anything either of us can do to help, just ask. We will do what we can."

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," I nodded.

Jerry offered his hand to me, and I shook it before Fiona wrapped me up in a hug. "Thank you, Pete. The Archon may not have said it, but you have done us a great service today. It won't be forgotten. You are making a lot of friends you don't know exist yet, but you will when it matters."

Not knowing what to say to that, but going off on another tirade about Thomas didn't seem productive. I just smiled and gave her a soft squeeze. "I'll see you both soon."

"And under better circumstances, hopefully." Jerry smiled as he opened the door and led Sterling out, with Fiona following after giving me another look and a soft smile. I watched them get to the stairs and then closed the door behind them, leaning my back against it and taking another deep breath.

"She wants to fuck you," Faye's voice giggled inside my head. "You should definitely fuck her. I bet she's HOT in the sack!"

"Urgh, really? After everything that has happened today, that is what you lead with?"

"Hey, you're pissed off. Everyone knows there is nothing better than good old-fashioned angry sex! Take it out on her pussy. I bet she'd love that!"

I was about to answer when the door knocked again. I pulled myself to my feet with a groan, checked who was on the other side, frowned, and opened the door.

Philippa looked up at me with an expression of something between a deer caught in headlights and pure, unbridled lust. "I need you!" she said simply, her chest rising and falling heavily.

"Holy fucking shit!" Faye shrieked. I could almost see her bouncing up and down with excitement. "Do it! fuck her! Take her! Screw her! Fuck her brains out! I swear to Christ, if you don't drag her in here and take all this anger out on her pussy, I am taking over your body and doing it for yah!"

I stepped aside and let her in.

********

For Ames.