Driving into the city had gone about the same way as you would expect driving into the blasted, destroyed, rubble-reduced ruins of a city filled with enemy soldiers to go. It was slow going. For every street we had found that was technically navigable, we had passed more than a dozen that weren't. On a few separate occasions, we'd been forced to reverse down the section we had come after finding a road blocked with rubble, cratered beyond use, or obstructed by the burned-out shell of a Russian tank.

Technically, it would have been easier and quicker to walk, but considering the number of landmines we drove over, the amount of bullets that pinged off the windshield, and the amount of soldiers on both sides who hadn't gotten the message that we were allowed to be there, it was certainly safer to stay in the car.

To be fair, the shield I had put around the car was strong enough for an extended stay inside the core of the sun. No amount of RPG rockets, armor-piercing rounds, or hastily thrown grenades were even going to scratch the paintwork, but they still made Bob feel uneasy.

The rest of our escorts were still acting like this was just another day at the office.

The routine became painfully predictable, and it was the "not pretty" part of the plan that had gotten us here. Col. Toptonov had followed his orders to the letter and had halted the artillery bombardment of the city; he had also contacted as many of the local ground forces as possible to tell them that we would be in the area, too. Those people let us pass with little more than a curious glance. It was the people who didn't have radios that were the problem. Judging from the sheer number of them, it was safe to say that the Russian army was having a severe radio communication problem.

Soldiers would pop their heads out from upper floor windows, see us coming, and - with no information to the contrary - would assume we were hostile and open up on us. After the two hundredth time, I gave up counting how many minds I had infiltrated to convince our attackers that we were friendly. In the end, I got sick of it and just pulsed out a single blanket statement that all human minds would be affected by. The SUV and the people inside it were not to be attacked.

Yes, it was a risk. There was a distinct possibility that the same message being used to ease our passage was also alerting any local Inquisitors or Evos to our location as well. We were still operating on the assumption that those sorts of powers could be tracked. But that had to be measured against the fact that all of the gunfire, explosions, and calls to arms were very quickly being silenced in a very un-combat-like manner. That on its own would have been more than enough to pique the interest of the people able to track us, not to mention that doing hundreds of those small manipulations had to be no different than a single large one.

Either way, the rest of our journey was... well, it wasn't really any different. We were still trying to drive around shell holes and the crumbled remains of once-proud buildings; we were just doing it without being shot at.

"Hey, Pete," Jerry's voice echoed in my head. I had forgotten that he had an almost limitless ability to contact me while his well was filled with the power I had topped him up with. "How's it going? Did you find anything in Av... Avel... Avan... in that place Bob mentioned?"

Fuck!

"Hey, Jerry. Nothing to report yet. We still haven't found any sign of Bob's people." I answered back cryptically, trying to keep the suspicion out of my voice before changing the subject. The realization that he may have been there as nothing more than a mole for Uri was something that I hadn't forgotten about. The fact he had been so quick to go off with Henry didn't make any sense at all, if that was his plan, but... I don't know... maybe he just hadn't thought it through. It was entirely possible that Jerry wasn't in on Uri's plans at all, and I was implying his guilt through nothing more than association. "How is Henry doing?"

"That is what I was contacting you about," he answered, his voice sounding like he was smiling despite the very obvious flaws in thinking that when his voice was literally in my head and not subject to the shape of his lips. "That's one tough son-of-a-bitch. Thirty-four hours in surgery, but it looks like he's going to pull through. The docs aren't sure about his ability to speak, but they think he should be able to swallow and... well... not bleed to death. So, something for you to pass onto the boys from us."

"That's great news," I sighed in relief. Despite everything else that had happened and what I had learned in the time since Jerry's departure with Henry, the escort commander's favorable prognosis really was good to hear. "I will let them know."

There was a pause in his voice. "Is.. um... is everything okay? You sound a bit... distracted."

"Sorry, man, we're trying to dodge some Russians at the moment," I answered half honestly. "The fuckers are everywhere."

"Ah, yeah, fair enough. Look, there has been no word left from Uri or Marco. I've checked in with Fiona, and she hasn't heard anything either. She told me to say hello, by the way, Charlotte, too. But anyway, I think we may have to go looking for them if they don't check in soon."

I clamped down hard on the growl in my stomach. Fiona was still with Charlotte and was very much under suspicion. Jerry was no different, but at least he was out of the fight for a short time. Still, my suspicion wasn't letting me see his fairly explainable observation as anything other than an attempt to lure me into another trap.

The coil of anger was starting to churn again. It could feel an opportunity to lash out at the enemy presenting itself, and the foundations of a plan started to build in my mind. "Alright, Jerry. We need to finish up here, and then we will be returning to base. We will come up with a plan when I get there and then go looking for them. Fucking Uri!"

"Yeah, I know it doesn't look good." Jerry sighed. "But I still can't just leave him there until I know. One way or the other. Besides, he could be innocent and in trouble. Either way, he can't be left out there on his own."

"He's not on his own."

There was another pause. "Why does it actually make it seem worse that only Marco is with him?"

Good fucking question!

"Tell you what, see what you can find out about his contact. Olena, he said her name was. We will use whatever you find when I get back." I was trying to stay calm, but Jerry was saying all the right things. It was the perfect way to lure me into a trap if he really was against me or a genuinely good reason to go looking for Uri if he wasn't, and there was simply no way to tell which one was true. Guilt by association was a shitty reason to mark someone for death at the best of times, and it was entirely possible for him to be as innocent as Uri was guilty. Or at least that was what the rational part of my mind was saying. The more instinctive part of me was just itching to get my hands on him and find out the truth... through blood, if necessary

"Will do, but I can be in Av... at the town in two hours if you need me. Don't hesitate to ask if you do."

"Got it. I will see you soon."

********

If there was ever a reason to completely disregard what the bible says, it is when it discusses the subject of Hell. You see, the threat of some meta-physical place where it's always burning, and you are subjected to some form of torture by a sadistic former angel with long horns and wearing too much blush only really works when there is no real-world equivalent. I would challenge anyone to take a look around the genuine, non-fictional hellscape of a city under siege and not see the gall in saying that it could get worse if you don't behave.

There was nothing left. Just pure desolation. Shattered lives that once inhabited the crumbling buildings were now piles of rubble and death in the street. Wide open boulevards and tree-lined plazas were now almost completely filled in with broken masonry and pot-marked by still-burning shell holes. The burned or burning shells of people's cars lined the streets, the smell of smoke, cordite, and brick dust hung in the air, and the rattle of gunfire and the odd explosion echoed off the shells of buildings, the only things still standing. Streetlights lay decapitated across the street. More than a few of them had clearly been mowed over by the tanks and armored vehicles whose remains we had passed on the way in. Baggage, suitcases, people's lives hastily packed away lay abandoned on the sidewalk, and clothing of every description tumbled along the ground in the soft, calm, chilling breeze. A little girl's white shoe lay alone in the middle of the street. Blood stains were everywhere.

A dog, once a beloved family bet, lay crushed beneath a slab of concrete. Its entrails spilling out of its stomach and its name tag hanging loosely against its lifeless neck... "Ivan"

Everything smelled of death.

Death and cordite.

The metallic scent of blood and the acrid taste of burning plastics.

Satan could take some serious lessons in what hell really looked like with just an hour-long stroll around here with a notepad and a strong stomach because, compared to this, the inferno he reigned over would seem like a summer camp.

It took hours to find the place where the meeting was supposed to take place. A journey that could have been made on foot in about forty-five minutes was endlessly delayed by one blocked thoroughfare after another. But in that time, I finally released my block on the rest of our escort. They were able to feel suspicion and question the mission and their surroundings as well as anybody else was, although they were still both oblivious and uninterested in how, exactly, we had managed to get into the city at all. I left that part vague in their minds, and they didn't question it. We were here, and we had a mission to carry out.

A collective sigh of relief was released by all of them when I passed on the good news about Henry, but the relief of stress was short-lived. "We're here," Gabriel announced, seemingly unfazed by the dozens of landmines he had driven over, each of them usually more than capable of turning our SUV into a fiery wreckage and tossing it effortlessly into the air, killing us all in the blink of an eye. The question of how we could possibly still be alive was one that his mind was simply incapable of asking.

I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts about Jerry that I hadn't really been paying attention to how close we were getting. Not that I would have been able to tell anyway. One devastated street lined with the ruins of obliterated buildings started to look like any other after a few hours of it.

"Where are we meeting her?" I asked, peering out of the front windscreen.

"We aren't meeting her at all. You are." Bob answered, his own gaze looking up at the towering remains of what used to be a highrise. "Turns out that this contact is well aware of Evos and Inquisitors and is also under the impression that we are still at war. We have been told to wait with the vehicle if possible, or on the ground floor of the hotel if it's too risky to be out in the open, while you go up and meet her alone."

"It is definitely too risky," Jakob added, his tone making it clear that this was in no way a recommendation.

"Okay..." I nodded, my eyes sweeping the carnage around us. "...and which building is... was... the hotel?"

"That one, I think," Bob answered after a few moments of silence, all of us looking out at the buildings and all of the buildings stubbornly refusing to look like anything other than precariously standing walls and dubiously suspended floors.

I squinted at it. "How can you tell?"

"It's the only one with more than three floors still intact," he answered with a shrug. "And it has 'Hotel' written on it."

"Does it? Where?"

"There, on the south wall."

"I can't see the south wall."

"I guess that would be why you missed it, then."

I rolled my eyes with something approaching a chuckle and took a deep breath. "Okay, gentlemen, game time?"

"Game time," Jakob nodded before directing his orders to his men. "Dismount, maintain defensive postures, check for snipers. Stay low, stay quiet, and move to cover!"

The men of our escort had barked out their affirmatives, opened their doors, and clambered out in the same amount of time it took me to take off my seat belt and ready my weapon. I hopped out, too, as Antoni flicked the seat folding release to let Bob and Jakob out of the back; I joined the rest of the men in dropping to a crouch and scanning the upper floors of the buildings around us for any signs of hostile soldiers.

I nudged my knee against something. That something moved. I looked down and found myself staring at a severed hand.

"Fuck me!" I sighed quietly to myself, the full weight of where I - a damned 20-year-old kid - was currently kneeling.

"Move to cover!" Jakob's order snapped me away from the gruesome distraction, and I looked up in time to watch the rest of the men - Bob bringing up the rear - Roadie rushing toward the ground floor of the hotel.

Get your fucking head in the game, Pete!

I shook myself off and ran after them. I was distracted. I knew I was distracted. My mind was pulling itself in a hundred different directions at once. Uri was in the city somewhere, Jesus; he could have been within earshot of me right now, and I wouldn't know it. Jerry may have been out of play for the time being, but Fiona - no less under suspicion - was currently "keeping an eye" on Charlotte and Evie. I had no way of warning either of them. My link to the computer was haphazard at best. Bob was still more than a little preoccupied with the whereabouts and welfare of his missing people, and that coiling anger in my chest, that machiavellian urge to just fucking kill something, wasn't shutting the hell up... I needed to concentrate, and I was failing miserably.

But somewhere in this building was a woman who may hold some answers. Both for me and for Bob, and yet, I couldn't sense her. I could hear her footprints, I could hear her breathing. I knew she was there, a few dozen meters above my head, but I couldn't see her mind.

It wasn't a void like an Inquisitor.

It wasn't a muted presence like an Evo.

It was almost exactly like the mind of Reinard Montreux, the High-Inquisitor who had attacked the party, just invisible. Holy shit, could this contact be a member of Inquisitor Royalty? How the hell had Isabelle not known about that when she had set up the meeting? No wonder the contact hadn't wanted other Inquisitors to see her. They would have recognized her immediately... right?

But wait... if the woman was a High Inquisitor, how the hell did she end up being a contact of Uri's?

I groaned loudly to myself as the answer dropped into place as well. If Uri was working with the Rogue Inquisitors, then this wouldn't be a royal associated with the Real Inquisition. This would be one of the bad guys!

I felt my hands grasp a little tighter around the grip of my rifle, my eyes locked on the invisible spot on the ceiling where the sound of impatiently pacing footsteps was coming from.

Someone was about to die!

"Jakob!" I barked over the comms to the Polish man checking the perimeter on the other side of the room.

"Receiving," his voice whispered back.

"I need a no-bullshit assessment here. What do you make of our current position?"

There was a pause as he stopped what he was doing, looked slowly around the room, and then out onto the street, and then back to me. "It's less than ideal, Pete. I mean, it could be worse, but it could be a whole lot better... Why do you... wait, what's wrong?"

"Something isn't adding up."

Jakob sighed again and whispered something to Hans, both of them taking a longer, slower, much more careful look around before they whispered amongst themselves again, and Jakob came back on the comms. "If this were another ambush, this would be a good place for it. There is not much in the way of cover, and there is no real means of escape. What are you thinking?"

"That this is another ambush."

"Shit! Okay, pull out?" he asked

"No, I need this information. It is worth the risk." I answered back, knowing I could probably take a High Inquisitor alone, and there was nothing a normal human could do to hurt me, even if Jakob didn't know that part. A quick scan of the area showed that there were literally hundreds of men in every direction. The question was, were they in league with the Rogue upstairs or just normal soldiers who happened to be in the area? Short of delving into every one of their thoughts, I had no way of knowing. "Is there another position close by that you would consider a better option?"

"Yes, actually," came the reply. "Hans thinks the second or third floor of the building across the street would be a much better option. We still wouldn't have much means of escape, but we would be nowhere near as exposed. It would also give us much better sight lines. Besides, any escape would involve the use of the SUV, and that is going to be the first thing they hit. Shall we reallocate over there?"

"Do it," I said simply. "And let's keep comms open; if you see anyone approaching the building, let me know."

He didn't answer. He just nodded his head, tapped Hans on the shoulder, who, in turn, tapped Gabriel, and all the way down the line to Bob, and the men started to cautiously and carefully make their way out of what must have once been a very lavish hotel lobby, and over to the building across the street.

I watched them do so as stoically as I was able.

That coiling, burning anger was starting to unleash itself. If Faye was right, if the traumas of my past had separated my rage from the rest of my psyche, then it was unspeakably close to being released again, with all the devastating force that my anger had proved itself capable of so many times already.

Oh yes, someone was going to fucking die!

I waited until my friends were out of sight before I moved. Slinging my rifle over my shoulder - I was more dangerous without it - and starting to feed that ball of vengeful power into my palms. I turned and stalked toward the stairs.

Four stories, eight flights of stairs, every step leading me higher and closer to the moment I seemed to know would change everything. This woman, being a rogue royal, changed everything. For a start, Uri wouldn't want her silenced if he was working with her, but at the same time, those doubts were already starting to tick at the back of my mind, the little nagging questions that stopped me from just dropping what was left of this building on her head and being done with it. Why had she agreed to meet me, apparently knowing that I was an Evo? How could that possibly make sense? Why was she helping the partisans against what could only be a concerted effort by the rogues to influence events in Ukraine? Was she breaking ranks and re-aligning her loyalties with the real Inquisition? But if Uri knew that, why was he working with her? Maybe he wasn't; if she had gone rogue from the rogues, then maybe he really was here to silence her. But if she was a royal, the highest of high inquisitors, then it was unlikely that Uri, on his own, would have much of a chance of doing anything to her. But then the whole idea that we were both here to "meet" the same contact was a pretty big assumption on my part.

By the time I was passing the third floor, the questions had started to temper the ball of fury that was tingling against my palm. Every step brought a new question, and not a single one was providing answers. I was doing it again. I had made this mistake enough times to recognize the pattern now; I was making assumptions, and I was basing my whole approach on what I thought to be true. I needed information, I needed answers, yet that burning ball of anger in the pit of my stomach, that yawning void that had once been filled by my naivety and my heart, was aching to strike back at the people who had struck at me, who had hurt me, who had stolen the few chances of real happiness from my life, was forcing me blindly forward. I would have been happy, I would have stuck to my little corner of the world, I would have left the Inquisition alone - rogue or otherwise - and I would have been happy with Faye, with Becky, with Jimmy, with my life. I never had any desire for power, nor really a massive desire for wealth; I had no wish to control the lives of others. I was a threat to nobody.

Yet, even as those thoughts raced through my mind, I had to admit that I didn't even know if I had been the target at all. The attack on the party that started all of this still didn't have a clear motive. Nobody really knew I was going to be there, so how could it have been targeting me? I had deduced that it must have been targeting Uri, but how could that be the case if he was working for the rogues? He would have been the one who instigated the attack, but why? Why that party? Why that night?

Why? Why? Why?

I was blind. I was fumbling around in the dark, and not only did I not have any answers, I wasn't even sure if I was asking the right questions. I was the sightless man, stumbling through a maze, given a choice - a question - at every new junction, only for that chosen path to lead to more junctions, more choices, and more questions, and the whole time being unsure if I was trying to find the exit of the maze, or if I should be trying to find the treasure at its center. Not even knowing if either one - the exit or the center - even existed.

I clenched my fist and snuffed out the balls of pulsing, furious, hungry power in my palm and stopped climbing the stairs. I took a long, deep breath.

Alright, let's examine what I 'know'...

One floor above me was a woman. A woman who had agreed to meet me, knowing that I was an Evo. There were no other people, no Inquisitor voids, no muted presences of blocking Evos anywhere else in the building, and there were no other footprints or sounds of other people even breathing up there; she was alone. Yes, sure, an ambush could come from outside, but there were no human thoughts directly focused on me either, and if I was the target of an ambush, there really should be some. If they weren't humans, then that bubble of... well, nothingness that I had felt immediately before the attack on the party wasn't present either. That woman was responsible for passing information about war crimes on to the Partisans and had been in contact with Isabelle's section of the real Inquisition to allow this meeting to even take place. Just because I couldn't understand her reasons for not wanting Bob, or other forces loyal to Isabelle to be with me for this meeting, that didn't mean that there weren't any.

That was about it.

That was as far as my currently verifiable information went.

That, taken on its own, at least suggested that she wasn't hostile. She may not have been friendly, but she certainly wasn't acting like a woman who should be considered an enemy, either.

Everything else, every assumption, every thought, and a considerable amount of the questions rattling around my head were being fuelled by my own simmering anger. I wanted revenge, I wanted justice, I wanted the people responsible for the pain they had caused to pay for it. The thought that all these things had happened, all this death, and the people responsible for it all could just go back to their lives without consequence was simply too much. I couldn't allow it; I wouldn't allow it. That was not the way that the world was supposed to work. But therein also laid the problem. I wanted the people responsible to suffer. Hurting innocents to get me to them would make me no better than the people who did all of this

"Don't lose yourself to this..." Charlotte's words echoed through my mind, and I felt the ghost-like fingers of Faye's hand lace into mine.

I wasn't alone. Even now, even at the darkest my mind had ever been, I wasn't alone. Perhaps for the first time in my life. I needed to be a better person; I needed to be the man that Faye and Charlotte could still love after all this was over. I needed to honor Becky's memory, not defile it with innocent blood spilled in her name.

I needed to be me again.

I closed my eyes, took another deep, calming breath, and started to climb again.

********

The door - I assume there had once been a door - had long gone. The charred remains of its frame were all that remained in the concrete archway in which it probably once sat. The building had apparently once been a hotel, so I imagine you can picture those long, warmly decorated upper-floor hallways leading to the guest rooms that we have all seen a few times. This wasn't like that.

The stairs had been blasted out of existence as they passed the fourth floor. Two of the building's outer walls were still standing - or at least the corner at which they joined was - and had somehow managed to keep the stairs propped up this high, but supporting them any higher, or any of the upper floors for that matter, was just too much for them in their condition. But from this position, it was clear that the rest of the building had been hammered. This small corner of it was basically all that survived. The hallway ended abruptly about 30 feet further along from where I was standing, disappearing into a pile of rubble several stories beneath me where the rest of the hotel now rested. Scorch marks from the fire that must have swept through this place had left the concrete of the building blackened and sooted. That, and the archway where a door once lived, was all that remained of this floor of the hotel.

I wasn't entirely sure of my orientation, but I think I was at the southwest corner. The eastern wall, the one on the other side of the room where I was supposed to meet this woman, was showing the telltale signs of battle. Most of the rest of the south wall was the same. It looked like some enormous creature had descended from the heavens to take huge, violent bites out of it, leaving only jagged crenellations jutting at various heights along its length like sharp, crooked, concrete teeth, rotted by the twisted remains of its reinforcing rebar that jutted out at obscene angles. Some of them stood another few stories above us; other parts looked like they ended a few levels below this floor; all of it was interspersed with shell holes that had gouged yawning voids in what had once been a proud outer edifice. The rest of it had just collapsed out into the street. The sound of masonry crumbling and falling away to the street or the rubble pile below was the only sound that rose above the soft wind.

The northern wall was just gone.

Most of the rest of the hotel had seemingly gone with it.

There was probably a pretty good metaphor in there about how my own life, like the hotel, had been blasted to pieces and was barely holding together, not even able to be viewed outside of the context of the war surrounding it anymore. But I was too focused on controlling my own breathing and the anger that wanted to bubble up with it to pay attention.

The woman was still pacing.

I rolled my neck, took another deep breath, swallowed down hard on that ball of vengeful rage that seemed to be latching onto the questions and the doubt in my mind as an excuse to unleash itself... and stepped through the archway.

As soon as I walked into the room, I froze.

The aura, that backdrop of light that seemed to surround every single Inquisitor that I had ever seen - from the men who attacked the party and the people in the office in Malaga, from Toussant and his men to Bob, from Princess Isabelle to Reinard Montreaux - all of them had one. The more powerful they were, the brighter their aura. Isabelle and Montreaux, both being royals, were downright blinding. And just like the woman pacing around the room, her back toward me as I entered, their minds were simply invisible.

Except this woman didn't have an Aura

At all.

There was nothing. Just a woman in Khaki-colored pants, a long dark combat jacket with camouflage print, and one of those wooly Sysow hats; you know, the ones like the Russians all wore that had long, dog-ear-like flaps that hung down over the ears and looked not only amazingly warm in the bleak Ukrainian winter but also ridiculously comfortable. I squinted at her. She was not armed, at least not on her person, but there was a heavy-duty and well-worn waxed leather backpack propped up against one of the walls. Her hair was tied up and tucked under her hat, and she seemed to be glancing nervously out across the city over the top of a chest-high section of broken wall through a set of piercing blue eyes.

Under normal circumstances, I would be more than a little intrigued by the fact that her mind, according to my senses, simply wasn't there; this was the sort of thing that had made me so interested in Evie but a thousand times more acute. Yet, given the circumstances of our meeting and everything else happening around us, my suspicion was boiling over to the extent that it was taking a significant amount of self-control simply not to kill her there and then, just to be on the safe side.

She must have seen me out of the corner of her eye because she yelped, spun to face me, and stumbled back again. "Fucking hell! Are you crazy? You don't sneak up on someone in a place like this. I could have shot you!"

I squinted at her. "But... You don't have a gun."

"Oh," she looked down at her empty, gloved hands. "Right."

"Who are you?" I asked, stepping into the room, trying my best and probably failing to keep the edge out of my voice.

"You're Pete, right?" she asked. I nodded, not taking my eyes off her. "Then I am your contact."

"Listen, lady," I said, narrowing my eyes at her. "You know who I am, and I've been told you know what I am..."

"Yes, you're an Evo, it's very impressive." She rolled her eyes at me, "Look, we don't have a lot of time, and you're already late."

"... and if you know what I am..." I continued as if she hadn't said anything. "... then you will know what I am hunting. I can't sense them, and I can't sense you. So you are going to have to do a whole lot fucking better than just saying you are my contact!"

She blinked at me, suddenly recognizing the thinly veiled threat behind my question. "You think I am with the Inquisition?"

"There is more than one."

The look of confusion that washed over her face actually went a long way in making me not regret my lack of violence here, but I didn't give anything else away. "What?" she frowned. "More than one Inquisition?"

I nodded.

"I... don't know how to answer that."

"Why don't you start by telling me who you are and why I can't read you. Trust is a rare commodity these days." I'm not sure what made me use those words; they were what Uri had said to me all those weeks ago in the diner before I had been attacked by Sterling, but the sentiment seemed to fit... and Uri had been on my mind a lot recently.

Her eyes narrowed a little before her shoulders seemed to relax. "You know Uri," I didn't bother to answer; I just kept holding her eyes, but the fact that she could recognize my association with him from that small turn of phrase was pretty telling in itself. Even more so when you took into account the almost immediate relaxation of her posture when she did. "My name is Olena. Uri and I have been friends for a long time. Obviously, I don't just feed information to him; I help Ukrainian military intelligence, too. And you can't read me because of this." She finished by pointing at her head.

For such a small statement, a lot of things flashed through my mind in a very short space of time. First of all, her name: Olena. This was the woman whom Uri had told us about on the plane journey here. He had said that she and her family were from the Chernobyl exclusion zone as well and that her brother had evolved the Evo mutation, but she hadn't. Her brother and the rest of her family had been attacked by an Inquisition hit squad some time ago; she had been the only survivor. She hadn't exactly confirmed that story, but the fact that they had "been friends for a long time" and her obvious mistrust of the Inquisition - probably from the attack on her family - did kinda lend itself to Uri being honest about that...

Which made no fucking sense whatsoever if he was a traitor!!

More god-damned questions!

The good news, however, was that she was the informant that we had come to see. Sending information to Ukrainian military intelligence, who in turn passed it on to Anastasia and the Partisans we had met in Alchevs'k. That meant that information about what happened to the people in the relocation center was - hopefully - close at hand

Of course, none of that was at the forefront of my mind. My concentration was fixed exclusively on what she was pointing at. "I can't read you because... of your head?"

Her eyes managed to somehow squint at me in even more confusion than before. "What? No, because of my hat. I... I don't know how I could be any clearer."

The look on my face must have said it all.

"I don't understand. How can you know Uri and not know about the hats?"

"Let's just say Uri is less than forthcoming about... well, everything. But how in the hell does a hat stop you from being read?"

She rolled her eyes and stepped forward. "We really don't have time for this," she muttered as she reached up and pulled her hat off. In an instant, her mind - her entirely human mind - opened up to me like a flower on a spring morning. In less than half a heartbeat, I knew that not only was she somebody that I could completely trust, but she was in no way part of any conspiracy against the Evos, let alone me in particular. Nor, for that matter, could she imagine that Uri would be either. Her trust in him was absolute. That was interesting to know, although it did fly in the face of almost everything I had been thinking recently, but that was a problem for another time. At that moment, I was more interested in the hat. She tipped it upside down and showed me the inside. It was lined with some sort of metallic sheeting.

"Is that... Aluminum foil... like conspiracy theorists wear?"

"Well, technically, it's tin foil, but the same principle applies."

"The... same principle as people who think aliens can read their thoughts and that 5g broadcast towers cause cancer?" I asked slowly.

She frowned at her hat. "I never thought of it like that, but apparently yes. Look, there are batteries in the flaps..." she wiggled one of the ear flaps at me, "... that passes a current into the foil, that creates a mini EM field, and there you have it, a miniature mobile Faraday cage that - somehow - stops Evos from being able to read me. Apparently, it's an artificial version of the biological defenses built into an Inquisitor's skull."

My frown threatened to bury my eyes beneath my forehead. "O...kay... but how do you know about that? How does Uri? I only found that out less than a week ago, and I was under the impression that it was a brand-new discovery."

She squinted one eye at me. She seemed to squint a lot. "Well, Uri gave me this, and told me how it worked years ago. So... I don't know what to tell you. Perhaps you misunderstood."

"I doubt that." My fingers kept running over the foil on the inside of the hat. "How the fuck can this possibly work? It makes no sense at all."

Olena sighed. It was the sort of sigh that long-suffering teachers give to overly inquisitive toddlers when they keep asking stupid questions. "Look, Inquisitors have some sort of metallic lattice that runs through their entire bone structure. It's organic, but its closest non-organic comparison is tin. Add in an Inquisitor's particularly strong bio-electric current, which travels through this lattice, and it produces an EM field... that EM field is what blocks an Evo's abilities and makes them immune to your powers. This does the same thing. I am really confused about why you don't already know this."

"You and me both."

"Uri didn't tell you?"

I arched an eyebrow at her.

"Okay, whatever, it doesn't matter," she huffed and pulled the hat back over her head. Just like that, her mind seemed to blink out of existence. "The Black knights have known about this for years. This is something you are going to have to pick up with him."

"Wait," I said, my mind in a complete daze by this point. "You know about the Black Knights?"

"Of course I do. I'm a member. Why do you think I am meeting you? Uri told me that you were a member, too."

"You've spoken to Uri??"

"Well, yeah."

"When?"

"About two hours ago. What's going on?"

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I have no fucking idea. Look, there is a traitor in the Conclave, maybe even in the Black Knights itself, and I'm not going to mince my words here; there is evidence that it is Uri."

Olena held my eyes for a few moments and then burst out laughing. This wasn't a slight, disbelieving guffaw; this was side-splitting laughter like I had just told her the funniest joke in the history of mankind. I waited for her to finish

I waited a lot longer than was necessary, given the subject matter, for her to finish

"I'm glad you find this amusing, but people are dead!" I finally barked at her. "Two of them were people I was very, very close to. We are being attacked, and things have happened that only Uri could have told them about. He has stood in the way of our investigation every step of the way."

"And yet you are here." She said simply. "You know Uri specifically told me to only talk with you, right?"

"What?"

"Yup," she nodded. "He said that no matter who you arrived with, I was only to talk to you and you alone."

I opened my mouth, but the part of my brain responsible for speech had been silenced by the rest of it.

"Look, I don't know where you are getting your information, but you are missing an angle here," she went on. "Uri has been tracking the traitor in the conclave for years. That is why I am here, in this hellhole of a city. That is why he gave me this..." She tapped her hat again. "... he didn't want anything I learned, or my presence here in general, to be picked up by some dirty fucking traitor. I need you to think about this for a second. I took my hat off; I knew you would be inside my head the instant that I did. I knew that and took it off anyway... because Uri told me I could trust you... but only you. Why would he have done that if he was the traitor?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose a little harder. Was it possible that Uri was playing both sides? Could he really be innocent, despite everything I had seen happen? Could there really be something that I wasn't seeing?

"Fucking hell," I muttered to myself through a deep exhale. "This is so screwed up."

Olena just stood there, letting me think for a moment.

"Okay." I finally said. "What did he say he was doing when you spoke to him last?" I was starting to wonder if Olena was the person Uri had been calling, the one that Marco had spoken about in his email. Let's face it, Uri did like his 'need to know' bullshit, and that really did look suspicious under the current circumstances when not explaining things to my Mentor.

"He said he was running down some leads, then he was coming here to meet me."

"He's coming here?" I mean, I knew he was coming to the city from Marco, but I couldn't even imagine why he would have told her to trust me unless he knew I was coming here too. But if he was coming here, and he knew I was coming here, and if he was innocent, why had he not arranged with me for us to come here together?

Olena nodded with a confused-looking frown on her face. "He didn't tell you that?"

"No! Uri hasn't told me shit!" It was my turn to roll my eyes. "I didn't even know he knew that I was coming here! In fact, I can't see how he could possibly know I was coming here."

"Oh, I told him."

I groaned loudly. "So, what's his plan now?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "I was told to give you all the information I had about the Inquisitors who were rounded up in Donetsk. I think he assumed you would be leaving to go get them once I had."

"They're alive??" I balked. "Wait, no, we need to circle back to that. One thing at a time. When is he due to arrive?"

Olena rolled up her sleeve and looked at her watch. "A couple of hours at least, but... I wasn't planning on hanging around here to wait for him. It's usually pretty dangerous in this section of the city, but the Russians seemed to have stopped their usual artil... wait, that was you, wasn't it? You got them to stop their bombardment."

I nodded.

"Nicely done." she chortled. "Well, I wasn't planning on hanging around, but I suppose if I don't have to worry about being blown to bits, I can wait for him here."

"I think I am going to have to wait for him with you," I sighed. "Something really fucking suspicious is going on here, and he and I need to have a serious chat."

"Yeah, no shit."

"Okay..." I sucked in and then exhaled another one of those deep, calming breaths. "Tell me about the Inquisitors from Donetsk."

********

Time decided to be a bit of an asshole while we waited, stretching itself out to interminable lengths for no apparent reason and dragging a four-and-a-half-hour wait out into truly mind-numbing levels of boredom. Olena, as it turned out, was pretty good company... for short bursts of time, telling me about her experiences in the war so far, but aside from giving me the information I needed to chase up what had happened to Bob's people, she didn't tell me anything new of any note. She spent most of the time looking out over the city. The chest-high remains of the outer wall gave her the perfect view of the intersection we had arrived at, not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the city. But I have to admit, I thought she was taking her life in her hands by leaning against it. It looked like it would follow the other parts of the hotel wall into the street below with nothing more than a whispered encouragement.

It was mid-January, and the winter months demanded that the sun started to set much earlier at this time of year, so even though we had arrived for our rendezvous in the middle of the afternoon, the light was already beginning to fade when a familiar, blacked out SUV pulled quietly to a halt outside.

I gritted my teeth as I watched a single lone figure climbing out of it, look around carefully, and walk into the blasted lobby of the hotel. Tracking that muted presence, the one that identified the character as a blocking Evo, was even more difficult than it was tracking an Inquisitor's void. The voids, as I have said before, were like patches of blackness against a slightly less dark background, their minds conspicuous in their absence. It was hard to gauge how far away they were, it was almost impossible to focus on them, and if they were moving, it was even more difficult. But if you knew they were there, and you knew what you were looking for, it was possible to follow them. A blocking Evo was different.

If an Inquisitor's mind was highlighted by its complete absence, a blocking Evo's mind was something closer to camouflage. There was no absence to highlight it against the backdrop of the cacophony of minds around me, and there was no contrast to focus on if it stayed still. It was more like a subtle ripple in the background, the shimmering of the surrounding presences. If you were looking right at it or could make a very strongly educated guess as to where that mind would be, you could just about make it out, but tracking it was almost impossible.

I tried.

I knew the exact route the lone figure would take to get up to this room. It was the only route he could take, and yet he had barely made it across the lobby before I lost him. Of course, that did nothing to my sense of hearing, and I could easily follow the source of those crunching footsteps as he climbed the same stairs I had.

I pulled myself to my feet.

It was time to get some answers.

Uri stepped into the room, freezing as his eyes landed on me. "Pete... what are you doing here?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. I was trying very hard not to let that anger boil over just from looking at him, and every part of me was warring with every other part of me, swinging back and forth between a whole lot of doubt and a hell of a lot of suspicion.

Uri tsked loudly and made to walk past me, "You shouldn't be here." he almost growled.

"Where's Marco?" I asked firmly, my lips seeming to move of their own accord and that ball of power starting to feed itself into my palm.

"It doesn't concern you."

"Wrong answer!" I spun around, bearing my full, furious gaze at him. A wall of power washed off me in every direction, and the building vibrated violently around us. Flakes of masonry and dust rained down from the few sections of wall that still towered over us, and Olena's combat jacket billowed out behind her as if caught in a gust of wind as she backed away from us. I could feel my eyes changing, darkening to almost a midnight black as they bore into Uri like I was going to immolate his very soul. Every ounce of that rage was released by that single, dismissive comment. "We are passed this need-to-know bullshit, you are going to answer the fucking question, or I am going to go in and get the answers myself! My patience is just about gone!"

"Pete," Uri held his hands up as if suddenly realizing for the first time that I wasn't messing around and starting to back away from me. "You don't want to do this. You have no idea what you're getting yourself involved in."

"And whose fault is that?!?" My voice was different, layering over itself dozens of times, like a dark, sinister, threatening crowd, all speaking with one voice through one snarling mouth.

"You don't... you don't understand..."

"Then, MAKE me understand! Everything points to you, Uri, EVERYTHING!! Every lie, Every betrayal, Every ambush, Every unanswered question... Every death... it all comes back to you!"

My skin felt like it was on fire, my palm was vibrating, the ball of yellow glowing power - the one I still wasn't sure could be seen by anyone other than me - was burning brightly against it, and my mind was coiling, ready to smash into Uri's with the fullest measure of force I could muster. The look on Uri's face suggested he knew full well what was about to happen.

"I lost him!!" Uri blurted out as his back hit the wall. "I don't know where he is."

He wasn't lying.

But he wasn't telling the full truth either

"You lost him?!?" I almost laughed through my furious rage. "You lost him?!? Like he was a set of car keys? Or is it more like when you lose a relative?"

"No..." he pressed himself harder against the wall. "I just don't know where he is."

"So, how do you explain the message he sent me?" I stalked closer. "The one that said he suspected you were the traitor and that he thought he was being led into a trap. That if he wasn't with you for this meeting, I would know that something had happened to him?!?"

"What? What message? What are you talk..." His voice stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening and his face paling. As if the final, massive piece of an unfinished puzzle just dropped into his lap. "Oh my god," he murmured as his shoulders slumped.

The look on his face was almost enough to calm me or at least question the thought that looked like it had just smashed through his head.

... Almost...

The power in my fist sparked.

I raised my fist, ready to end him right there for every amount of pain, hurt, and suffering that he had caused.

My mind would crash into his and rip out every single shred of the knowledge he had denied me.

One way or another, I was getting those answers.

I was done being kept in the dark. Now I really needed to fucking know!

And then, for the briefest of moments, a human mind flashed through mine. A thought locked onto me for a fraction of a second from somewhere far behind me before it was gone again. Four words echoed spectrally through my head...

"No...The bald one."

Uri looked up, his eyes flicking past me, over my shoulder, and out into the city beyond.

Then, a red dot appeared in the center of his forehead, and the back of his head exploded onto the wall.