The world was spinning when I stepped out of the mindscape and back into the small basement room with Charlotte, Evie, Fiona, Agatha, and the still-sleeping Philippa. Everything felt... hollow, duller, as if the color had been sucked out of the world. The sun may very well have been burning bright in the sky, but I seemed to be immune from its warmth.

I just felt... less.

Faye was gone.

The melding of her mind with Philippa's, combined with a sizable influx of my power, had overwhelmed the sleeping brunette; like overfilling a stomach on Christmas day, her body had simply demanded rest and shut itself down. She was okay—physically, at least—but she would be sleeping for a while yet. Whether or not Faye's sacrifice had been successful in repairing the poor girl's mind was yet to be seen. If there was to be some artificially induced awakening, it hadn't happened yet. Philippa was out cold, and her mind was dormant, at least for now.

That made Faye's decision all the harder to stomach, though. I had no words to describe the ache in my heart that came with losing her all over again. Her reasons were noble, they were honorable, they were selfless, and filled with nothing but love, yet I already missed her more than any language was able to convey. The only silver lining to her decision would come if her sacrifice had worked. At least then, I would have something to point to as the good thing that came from losing her.

If it didn't work, though, her sacrifice would have been for nothing, and the thought of that was more than I could bear. Losing her for a noble cause would be heartbreaking; losing her for nothing would be beyond comprehension. And Philippa's newly required state of unconsciousness was not giving me an answer one way or the other.

"What happened?" Charlotte asked softly from behind me, her voice barely a whisper. I didn't even turn to look at her; I couldn't. I was still standing at Philippa's bedside, looking over her, my hand having moved away from her forehead as I came out of the mindscape, but I could barely see. Tears were clouding my vision faster than I could blink them away, and I could feel my shoulders starting to shake as the heartbroken sobs started clamping onto my chest, whether I wanted them to or not.

Society, despite the best intentions and lofty declarations, still views men who cry as weak. For generations, little boys were told that crying was something that they should never do, and although great strides have been made in reversing this stigma in recent years, the sentiment still exists. Stoicism, inner strength, and broad shoulders that could carry any burden were all still traits associated with manhood. It was even worse for me. Crying was an absolute sign of weakness, and I grew up in a world where weakness was capitalized on and punished. Tears meant the torture and the abuse were working and only encouraged more of it.

The last time I cried was when I was 12 years old. I had fallen down the stairs. My father mocked me mercilessly for days for it, despite the fact - it turned out - that I had broken my arm in the process. Pain was weakness, too. Girls cried, and if I was crying, that must mean I was a girl. The man had gone out and bought a dress that would fit his 12-year-old son and then personally dropped me off at school the next morning wearing it... broken arm and all. I didn't have many friends at school, but one of them had seen me being dumped out of my father's car, dragged me aside before anyone else could see me, and given me his gym clothes to wear. He then told the teachers he had found me cradling my arm in the locker room. The school had been the ones to get my arm checked in the hospital. Alec Levy, that had been the boy's name. He developed a childhood cancer of some sort a few years later, and it killed him. I couldn't bring myself to cry at his funeral either. I hadn't thought about him or that incident in more years than I could count, but my father's lesson had been learned. I never cried after that, not once.

Not after the party, when Faye had been killed.

Not after the death of Becky

Not after the death of Uri

Not after the discovery of the betrayal of Marco.

And, for perhaps more understandable reasons, not at the death of my parents.

For eight years, a tear had never left my eyes.

Now, though, my emotions weren't giving me a choice in the matter; those tears were coming whether I wanted them to or not. Modern society may not look down on men crying anymore, at least not as they used to, but there are still plenty of men and women - especially women - out there who do, and those people instill the belief that crying is for the weak into their sons.

Now, the floodgates had opened.

Everything came out. Every shred of grief and misery, every ounce of heartbreak and sorrow, all of the anguish and the pain and the loss, the frustrations and the betrayals and the sacrifice, all of it poured from my eyes in a veritable waterfall of tears. A small part of me, that little voice of self-depreciation in the back of my mind, mocked me for my weakness, told me how I should be embarrassed and ashamed of myself for showing that weakness in front of the people who looked to me for strength, but the hulking mountain of my anger stamped on it hard enough to squash it like an overripe melon.

Of all the parts of me that understood, it wasn't my intellect, it wasn't my maturity, and it wasn't my experience that understood that I needed this. It was my rage. It was the abject, unutterable fury that another sacrifice had been needed, and it was my loathing of the world and the fates that it needed to have been Faye's. She was a hero in any and every way that mattered; it was a selflessness of the most profound and noble kind, but life was teaching me a lesson that I had never considered before.

Nobility doesn't come cheap, and it certainly isn't free.

It had been only a few seconds since Charlotte had asked her question, but it felt like so much longer. The pain of losing Faye all over again was making each one of those seconds drag out to a scale that would qualify as its own form of torture. But I finally turned to face her.

"Pete?" There was a sudden, apprehensive tremble in Charlotte's voice as she saw the pain etched into my face. "Pete, what's wrong?"

I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn't come out; I just looked back at Philippa again. Charlotte stepped forward, a look of dread starting to fill her face as she saw my look of anguish before my eyes fell back to Philippa. I wanted to tell her that Philippa was okay, or at least that she wasn't any worse, that maybe there was some hope for her... but the words wouldn't come. "Pete, what's happened?"

She reached her hand out for me. I don't know if it was a conscious act on either of our parts or not, but the information just flowed between us. I wanted to show her; she wanted to know, and that was, apparently, all that was needed for me to show her everything that had happened.

Charlotte's eyes widened before a choked sob of her own fell out of her lips. "Oh... Oh no. Faye." It would seem that tears came perfectly easily to Charlotte. She fell into my arms, wrapping herself around me and pulling me in close. "I'm so sorry."

I just held her, my world feeling like it was falling apart around me. A quick glance up at Evie and Fiona, both of whom were looking at me with very different looks of confusion on their faces. Fiona knew Faye; she had known since long before I had met her, but as far as she was concerned, Faye had died at the party. I never told her anything about Faye living in my head; in fact, Charlotte was the only person who knew about that, and even then, only from the time that Faye had spent with her when I had hunted for Marco's ghost through her city. To Fiona, it must have looked like a massively delayed reaction to the loss of Faye. Either that or she had misheard something but was too polite to ask.

Evie, on the other hand, had no idea about Faye; she'd never been told anything about her. She was just letting her eye flick back and forth between Philippa and me with a look that said she just hoped someone would fill her in on the details later. But both women could see I was hurting, and the way Charlotte had crumpled into me was more than enough proof that I was hurting for a very good reason.

Only Agatha seemed to have a vague sense of what was going on. She was also looking between my sleeping friend and me, but hers was a look of something like professional curiosity mixed with no small amount of wonder. Obviously, being an Evo and having no immediate desires to smash into her mind, I had no idea what she was thinking, but she had been the person who had originally told me that Faye was waiting for me inside my city, back during the first time I had lost her. I doubted she understood the full nature of how I had essentially unwittingly downloaded my bond mate into my mind, but the look on her face suggested that she was starting to.

For the moment, though, I couldn't think about that, or anything else for that matter. When Faye had first been killed at the party, I had been operating on pure instinct; I had been numb to everything else and letting that newly unleashed anger pull me along while the rest of my brain worked on autopilot. In hindsight, I was pretty surprised and impressed at the level of restraint I had shown on that brief trip to Malaga and not butchering everyone there because I certainly hadn't been thinking clearly. By the time the grief really started to set in, I had discovered her in my city. Was I still pissed? Absolutely! But the heartbreaking grief that should have come at her death never really materialized for Faye in the same way it had done for Becky. Becky's death was final; it was eternal, and there was no coming back from it. Faye's was... different. Less, somehow. Because she was still with me. I never really lost her.

Now, though, she was gone, she was really gone, even if her sacrifice paid off. Suddenly, her death felt just as real as Becky's, and that delayed sense of loss had landed on my shoulders, and the weight of the world came with it. For the first time in years, I just cried. I cried for Faye, I cried for Becky, I cried for all the unfairness and cruelty that my life seemed to attract. I cried in heartbreak, I cried in frustration, and I cried in anger.

For once, I let myself... feel.

********

Charlotte held me for about an hour, just letting me get that pure, raw emotion out before I felt composed enough to explain what had happened to the others. Evie just looked at me as if I had just grown a second head. In some ways, it was endearing how naive she was to the powers that had been surrounding her for months now. In other ways, though, it was reckless; she needed to understand this world if she was going to survive it. Yeah, I saw the hypocrisy of that through, too. But I just didn't have the time or the emotional reserves to explain things to her in more depth. I was sure that Fiona or Charlotte would fill in the gaps for me. Fiona looked stunned that I was powerful enough to download the consciousness of a whole person into my mind in only a few minutes, even more, flabbergasted to learn that Faye had been fighting alongside me since a week or so after the party and possibly a little hurt that I hadn't shared this with her before. I liked Fiona, and she had proven her loyalty and reliability to me time and time again, but as with Evie, I didn't have the mindset to smooth ruffled sensibilities. I hadn't told her because I didn't trust her, I didn't trust her because I had been manipulated into thinking her boss had been the traitor, and I had thought Uri was an enemy because Marco had infected me with his corruption, the same corruption I had banished from her when I first arrived. My lack of trust had been warranted.

Agatha, on the other hand, just looked shell-shocked. "That is remarkable," she murmured. "Truly remarkable. It seems that your power is so great that the imprinting process we all go through during a bonding actually upgraded to allow you to absorb a whole separate consciousness."

I just nodded. I was tempted to point out that I had done it with Uri as well, and we certainly hadn't been bonded. But Agatha was with the Sect, and they were more than a little under suspicion. Agatha herself was clean; she knew nothing of any traitors and absolutely wasn't one of them. But she was also old, and - stereotypically - old women were very good at a few things. Knitting, baking, spoiling grandchildren, and fucking gossiping. One slip of the tongue and it could... actually, now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure what the repercussions could be for people finding out that Uri was alive(ish) and well inside my head. Probably nothing, but it was a risk I wasn't willing to take. I was still in that siege-mentality, I was still suffering losses, and Faye - if she had survived the merging with Philippa - was now in a very vulnerable position. It wasn't a huge stretch of the imagination to think that the Praetorians, on learning how Faye removed herself from my mind, would start deliberately destroying the minds of the people around me to force Uri to make the same sort of sacrifice Faye had. Then, with that new host body weak and exposed, they could come in and finish the job of killing him... or worse.

"And to imbue that consciousness into another as a form of mental healing?" Agatha was still talking. "That's something I would never have considered. Not that anyone else would have the power to try it," she finished with a bit of a self-admonishing chuckle.

"It wasn't my idea," I answered back flatly, the pain still raw in my tone.

"Oh... yes, of course. I apologize, Pete," she winced at her inadvertent insensitivity before glancing back down to Philippa. Her voice softened a little as she continued, "I meant no offense. Perhaps, one day, you will understand how astonishing that level of power is to the rest of us. We must all seem so... small to you."

It wasn't a question; it wasn't even an observation; it was more like she was thinking out loud. Even in my compromised state of mind, I could see that she had meant nothing by her statement. It was just a thought that passed through her mind, given voice by poorly controlled lips, and that on its own was more reason not to tell her anything about Uri. The inability to keep your own thoughts inside your head where they belong was a rather large red flag when it came to keeping secrets.

I didn't answer her, just letting her stare off into the middle distance in the vague direction of Philppa's bed as she let the thoughts mull over in her enhanced mind. Charlotte squeezed my hand; I had been so out of it, so lost in my emotions, that I hadn't even realized she was holding it. I smiled weakly up to her. "What's the plan?" She asked softly.

"I don't know," I shrugged. "Just... wait until she wakes up, I guess."

"No, I... I meant about the Sect."

"Oh."

"We're already here, and you're gonna have to do your cleansing thing sooner rather than later, so I thought..."

"That we'd do it while we were here. Two birds, one stone, and all that."

She just nodded, looking apprehensive into my eyes.

"But?" I probed.

"I... these people are my family, Pete," she sighed. "I don't think I can imagine any of them involved in any of this."

"I hope you're right," I said, returning her earlier gesture and squeezing her hand. "I just can't imagine why Marco and the Praetorians would mention the Sect unless they had infiltrated it."

"Maybe it was to cast suspicion?"

"Possibly," I nodded with a shrug. "But there was something about the way he said it. It was like he was boasting, showing off how big they were and how far they'd already got. It was like a sales pitch rather than... I don't know. You could be right, but we need to know either way."

"Do you think it has anything to do with the thing Marco put inside me?"

I hadn't thought of that. "I'm not sure. He clearly put something different into you than he did with me and the others I have found. Maybe it was because of your link with the Sect. Maybe you were the first step he took with infiltrating them."

"But, it didn't work."

"No, not really. Not if your hatred of him was anything to go by. But my guess is that he made some tweaks to his methods 'cause it sure as shit worked in me, and if it worked on me, it would have worked on members of the collective. We need to be sure, one way or the other." I felt my anger stirring in my chest again and cast a look over to Fiona. So much time had been wasted chasing her boss when he was never doing anything worse than being a little cryptic with his information. Something that was more than a little explainable by the fact that he really was hunting a traitor. That anger happened every time I thought about how Marco's corruption had successfully turned me against Uri, a man who could have been my closest ally, and it seemed to get more visceral each time as if the punishment I was dishing out to myself was cumulative, and getting worse each day. I couldn't guarantee the safety of anyone found to be in league with him or his deluded friends.

A few seconds ago, when Charlotte had first brought it up, I really wasn't in the right frame of mind to go rampaging through the collective, but it would seem that one stirring of my anger was enough to correct that misguided notion. I was already more than willing to rip off a few heads to get to the truth.... Figuratively or literally. The collective was right here, and either Charlotte was right, and the Praetorians had mentioned the Sect simply as a way of spreading suspicion, or she wasn't, and Hell was about to come for its dues.

I rolled my neck and looked at Charlotte. She saw the look in my eyes immediately, swallowed down a gulp of trepidation, and nodded back. "I hope you're right," I said as I stood up. "I hope none of them are involved, but..."

"My family wouldn't be involved," Charlotte said firmly, standing up next to me. "And anyone who is, is no family of mine."

I looked over to Agatha. She looked a lot less shocked, upset, or even angry than I expected her to, given the circumstances and what was about to happen. For a moment, I thought that maybe she wasn't quite aware of what I was capable of, but the look in her eyes said differently. They were hardened with the same granite resolve as Charlotte's. The Sect, to them, really was a family, the only one that some of them had known in a very long time - Agatha's entire biological family, for example, were killed in the Yellow Fever Epidemic of New Orleans in 1878, the same horrific outbreak that claimed the life of renowned Confederate General, John Bell Hood. But even to her, the treachery that would be needed for one of their own to join with the Praetorians was beyond forgiveness. They were not related by something as random as biology and blood; the Sect were bound by something greater: Loyalty and unity of purpose. With that broken, a person was not worthy of life in the collective.

Evie was still looking confused and more than a little out of place. She looked like she was very aware that she was less than the small fish in a veritable shark tank. She was the pebble poking out of the sand on the tank bed, just watching things beyond her comprehension floating by, and unsure if she should consider herself fortunate to be allowed to observe this world that was so far beyond her.

In contrast, Fiona held my eyes. She knew what was coming; she had seen me in action at the party and on the sand dunes of The Hague; she was more than aware of the power of my wrath once it was unleashed. Charlotte, arguably, knew as well, perhaps even knew it better, but she had only ever seen it through my eyes in the memories I had shared with her, or with her own, but inside her own city where nothing much happened except a grand showing of my strength, which she already knew. She had never seen the violence for herself, and as faithful as those memories had been to actual events, there was something lost in their translation if only based on her physical separation from events when they had happened.

Agatha had seen war. She had fought in the War of 1812 and been part of the rebel Evos who had broken away from the Conclave. She had killed and seen friends and enemies die, a few by her own hand. I knew this from the briefest of glimpses into her mind when I checked her for Marco's corruption. She was under no illusions about what was coming, both today and in the future.

I turned, finally, back to face Charlotte. "I think it's best you stay here," I said softly.

"What? No! I'm coming with you!"

"Charl, this could get messy. You don't need to see that... and more importantly, your family doesn't need to see you as part of the force responsible for it if it does happen."

Charlotte held my eyes; that resolve from her earlier faltering a little as she considered it for a second before it immediately re-solidified to an extent I really hadn't expected. "You know one thing I learned from nursing?" she asked defiantly. "Getting a patient to like you is always secondary to doing what is best for them. This is my family. If they don't like me for doing what needs to be done to protect them, then fuck 'em. It's not my job to be friends with everyone; it's my job to keep them safe!"

"Is it?"

"It is now!" Her eyes stayed locked onto mine. "What's that saying? Those who care don't matter, and those who matter won't care. The Collective has stood on the sidelines for too long, they need to see that this war isn't about them getting involved or not, they're already involved, and they're losing."

"Are we losing?" Agatha asked from behind me, following the conversation closely.

"If there are Praetorian traitors in our midst, subverting us from the inside out, without us even knowing it's happening, what do you think is happening? Where do you think that road leads?"

Agatha looked thoughtful for a few moments before nodding. "You need to start with the council first," she said. "And neither of you has the gravitas to call a meeting, so it looks like I am coming as well."

"I'm coming, too," Fiona announced. "I've sat out too much of this, and you may need backup."

Charlotte didn't even wait for me to give a response; she just nodded and smiled at the dark-haired girl behind her. Then, all eyes turned to Evie.

"I'll... I'll stay here and watch Philippa," She smiled nervously, everyone knowing that there was nothing else she was able to do in this situation. "Just... be careful." She added to finish, offering something of a weak smile of encouragement and concern. It was cute, and it was endearing, but it was unnecessary. That coiled, thoroughly provoked beast of anger inside me harbored no illusions that care was needed. This was going to go one of two ways: Either the people in the Collective were all innocent, and life would go on for them as normal, or they weren't, and the ravenous, insatiable hunger for violence that my fury seemed to hold would be satisfied. I offered Evie the closest thing to a smile that I could manage and then turned back to the others.

"Okay, let's do this."

********

Entering the Collective was, in a lot of ways, the same as entering the cathedral of the Conclave. Once you knew how to get there, re-entering it at any time and from any place was pretty straightforward. I didn't need to be in the Sect's mansion to get into their communal consciousness any more than I needed to be in the British Library to enter the Conclave. Being here didn't make it any easier; it just happened to be where Philippa was being kept because, at the time when that decision was being made, the Sect seemed to be the safest, closest option. The idea that there could be real traitors to our race within that order hadn't really occurred to me. At the time, to me, they were, at worst, apathetic and non-committal observers. That had been annoying to the point of infuriation, but it hadn't been anything to actually worry about. It was only the revelations provided by the Praetorians that had cast doubt on that, and by then, Philippa was already here.

I know it was me, I knew it was my mindset, and I knew it was my suspicion, but the Collective seemed... duller than before. The last time I had been here, it had seemed like a vibrant, colorful community, both literally and figuratively. Filled with sunshine, people, and warmth, it couldn't have been any more different from the formal, imperious, archaic rigidity of the Conclave. The Conclave's cathedral was, in a very literal sense, a representation of a religious institution; there was a hierarchy of rank, there were roles for each member, and there were strict and enforceable rules and codes of conduct. Hell, even the visual representation of it was that of a massive Catholic-like cathedral. The Collective was more akin to a hippy commune. There was a freedom here, a culture of individualism where each person was free to do as they wished as long as it didn't threaten the whole, and that was represented - in physical terms - by a sprawling rural village with all manner of buildings, gardens, and people. It reminded me - at least as far as my imagination went - of what a normal rural colonial village would have looked like in the early 1800s when the Sect and the Collective were simultaneously founded. There were cobblestone streets, small houses, slightly larger houses, the larger central Grand Hall, lots of green grass, and the smell of home cooking. It was a heady mix of nostalgia and optimism and a far cry from the vaunted, echoey cathedral of the Conclave. Whereas that seemed to be designed to make the institution seem infinitely larger than the person, making them feel how small they were compared to the whole, the Collective seemed to denote a sense of community and belonging. A person could be as involved or isolated from the whole as they wanted; it was up to them.

It was a setup I much preferred compared to the alternative. But whereas my first visit here seemed to be like visiting on a bright, warm summer's day - as it always was inside the mindscape - today seemed to be darker. Not dark for a lack of light, but for the mood that came with me. It was like seeing through the looking glass, scraping back that thin veneer of idealism and gazing unapologetically at the reality of what I was seeing. It was like the immersion into the dream had been shattered; the houses and the immaculately manicured gardens seemed fake, or at least presented in a way that would hide the bodies that could have been buried beneath them. The glorious blue sky seemed more like a painted wooden ceiling, much closer overhead than the illusion would have you believe, and the smiles of the people were not warm and welcoming; they were hollow and speculative. Each set of accusatory eyes was judging you as worthy or not from sight alone. I have no idea how much of that was accurate and how much of it was a result of my dark mood, but the utopian dream I had seen on my first visit was not the same vision that appeared before me as I took my first look around.

I wasn't the only one who noticed it, either. Charlotte's look of grim determination seemed to mirror my own, and even Agatha held an expression of purposeful intent. Fiona was looking around curiously. I had to assume that this was her first expedition into the Collective, and she was seeing the fabled center of power of an order that had always been an elusive and mysterious entity to anyone who had grown up within the bosom of the Conclave. But the look of wonder and intrigue on her face was tempered by a healthy dose of suspicion and paranoia. More than that, the locals - the present residents of the Collective - all seemed to stop what they were doing and stare in our direction.

And all of them could see that we were not here for a jaunty visit or to enjoy the scenery.

Agatha moved first, her gaze not on our surroundings or the people but locked firmly onto the doors of the Grand Hall, and she started marching purposefully toward it. Fiona and I were right behind her, but I couldn't tell if she was matching my suspicious glares at the people as we passed... I was too busy glaring. Charlotte was a few steps behind us and returned the nod that I gave when my eyes met hers over my shoulder. There was an odd mix of emotions on her face; a large part of her had kept that steeled resolve, that determination to see this thing through. But now that the reality was growing closer with every onward step, that look of resolve was being filtered through the growing apprehension of what we could find.

Agatha had no such qualms or uncertainties about her task. To her, it was very simple. She had been one of the founding members of the Sect, maybe not in the literal 'she was part of its formation,' but she had certainly come along with those venerable members who had started the whole thing. She had fought off the attacks from the Conclave; she had killed former friends, and she had watched her people be killed around her. She had good friends, people as close to her as a real family, killed by attacks that she - like everyone else - had laid at the feet of the Inquisition, only to find out now that the Inquisition had no part in them whatsoever. The Praetorians had killed them, and any member of the Sect - from Arthur, the high council leader, all the way down to the newest acolyte - associated with the Praetorians was not only a traitor of the most severe magnitude but was guilty by association of every crime committed against the people she had loved and lost. Her anger was, perhaps, even more acute than my own. Charlotte, on the other hand, had been gifted a comparatively easy and danger-free life. She had been born long after the troubles and had been only a few years old the last time a real attack had been made against the Sect. To her, it was inconceivable that anyone would betray the Collective in the way that the Praetorians had suggested.

My anger, strangely, seemed to be following Agatha's lead, maybe recognizing an equal in the older woman. It was there; it was radiating out of me in sheets of malevolent intent, but two simple factors were tempering it: firstly, I didn't know who, if anyone, was the traitor or traitors, and without a specific target to focus on, it was just staring down a theory. Secondly, Agatha was giving it - and the rest of me - the distinct impression that should we discover treason within the ranks of the Collective, I wouldn't be at the front of the queue when it came to dishing out justice. Considering the bloodlust it had filled me with for the past few months, it was odd to find my anger perfectly willing to take a back seat to the much older and wiser fury of the ancient woman power walking ahead of me.

She was still a few steps ahead of the rest of us when she shoved open the large double doors of the Grand Hall. Strength, at least in relation to inanimate objects like doors, wasn't really a thing in the mindscape. Still, the doors crashed into the interior walls with enough power for me to wonder if they wouldn't start crumbling under the force of the impact. It was certainly enough to make every person in the council chambers - the scowling Margaret included - jump to their feet as if a bomb had gone off. To be fair, the sound the door made as it crashed into the wall didn't sound too dissimilar to an explosion, especially in the confined space of the council chambers.

"Sit!" she barked at the gathered group as I stepped through the door behind her, Fiona and Charlotte close behind.

"What is the meaning of...." Margaret started to speak, but a withering glare from Agatha was enough to silence her in an instant. Arthur had shut her up the first time I visited the sect, but that had been in the real world when he had insisted Charlotte join me for my first meeting with the council, but that was nothing compared to the barely contained apoplection in Agatha's stare.

"You seem to mistake me for someone you can defy, Magaret," Agatha snarled at the slightly younger-looking woman, even though she was at least two centuries Agatha's junior. "And you are mistaking that order to sit for a request!"

Margaret sat down with a feeble gulp.

"Agatha, I don't know what is going on," Arthur said carefully from the head of the conference table, "but this is not how we do things here."

Agatha ignored him. "It has come to my attention that there may be traitors in our midst. Working for a group calling themselves the Praetorians."

I blinked. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that the Sect hadn't been kept up to date on matters. It made perfect sense; I was the only one who knew, and I had kept my circle very, very tight. Those who had been allowed into it had been sworn to secrecy, so the fact that Arthur and the rest of the council blinked at Agatha in confusion made a lot more sense than my mind gave it credit for. "As you know, Pete here asked us for help tracking down a rogue element of the Inquisition," she went on, starting to stalk menacingly around the circumference of the table, outside the chairs and holding the eyes of every attending council member in turn. "To our shame, we chose cowardice and isolation over our obligation to protect our people."

"Now, Agatha," Arthur started, raising his hands defensively. "That decision was made with..."

"Did it sound like I was finished?!?" Agatha barked at him with a tone of disgust that made the man shrink into his chair. "That decision was an exercise in spinelessness! You know it, and I know it. Our people have been attacked and killed by what we assumed to be Inquisition hunting parties, and after finding out that they weren't, that some other force was behind the death of our families..." She emphasized the last word with a pointed look at Matthew, her grandson and fellow member of the council, followed by another equally meaningful stare at Arthur. He had been offered a place on the council when the man who had previously held his seat had been killed in an Inquisitor attack. Except it wasn't the Inquisitors, and that raised some rather uncomfortable questions for anyone who had benefited from that lie. "... And we did nothing! We let other people do our dirty work for us, and why? Well, I thought that it was just cowardice, people wanting to bury their heads in the sand and hope that the problem went away on its own if we ignored it for long enough. But now I am wondering if there wasn't something more nefarious at play."

"Agatha, I don't know what you are implying, but..."

"I swear to fucking god," Charlotte growled at Arthur from her place next to me. "If you interrupt her one more time, I am going to nail your tongue to the god-damned table! Shut the fuck up, and she will tell you exactly what she is implying!"

"How dare you speak to him like...." Margaret's hissing retort was silenced by a loud slap as her face became intimately familiar with the back of Charlotte's hand. It wasn't a hard, backhanded slap—nowhere near as powerful as Charlotte was capable of—but it was enough to send the old crone spilling out of her seat into a crumbled, shocked-looking heap on the floor.

"If I wanted your opinion," Charlotte growled at her. "I would've given it to you. You have been asking for that for a while now. Follow your master's lead, little puppy, and shut the fuck up!"

Cradling her reddened cheek and looking up at Charlotte like she was from another planet, Margaret just whimpered and finally pulled herself back to her seat, thankfully staying silent.

Agatha looked over to Charlotte with a soft nod before turning back to the table of elders. "Now, Pete is going to show you what has gotten me so riled up, and then you are each going to submit to testing. I have already passed mine, and no, this is not optional! Anyone refusing to be tested will be branded as guilty of treason against the Collective, and I will deal with you personally!" She waited a few seconds to make sure there were no further arguments from the shocked and newly fearful elders before she looked over at me. "Show them."

I nodded and looked around the group. The influence from Marco was like a shadow I could see around a person affected by it. It wasn't something that jumped out at me like an Inquisitor's Aura, but I could sense it, now that I knew what I was looking for. Unsurprisingly, none of the council seemed to have been infected. But that made sense. From what I could gather, Marco had been infecting people with his corruption as he awakened them or as he trained them; that is how he fed it into me, and that was almost certainly how he had infected Charlotte. Everyone at the table was significantly older than Charlotte, though; none of them would have been awakened or trained by my former mentor. So anyone guilty of treason here would have made that choice of their own volition. That was something that, like Agatha, would require a significantly more in-depth and invasive test.

"You all know the score," I said, stepping forward. "Hands on the table."

"Pete, I..." Arthur started.

"Save it," I barked back at him. "You made your choice, and it was the wrong one. If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. But there are only two ways you are leaving this room: tested and cleared of any wrongdoing or in a body bag."

With a heavy swallow, Arthur put both of his palms on the table, followed in short order by every other member of the council.

I showed them the events in the Praetorian compound. Not all of them, of course. Toussant was still in play, and I didn't want to tip my hand when it came to my control over the former Praetorian, nor did I want to show them how I had survived my incarceration just in case that was a trick I needed in the future, but from the point I was brought before the Prefects, Tribuns and Tiberius, through their conversation with me - including the revelations about members of the Sect being part of their order and their plans for both the Evo species and the fate of humanity - to their grizzly and horrific deaths. I also showed them the battle. It was unnecessary; perhaps I was showing off a little, but I wanted to dispel any misguided notions these people had that they could beat me in a fight. It's not that I sensed that desire from any of them, but as long as they knew I was capable of following through with any threats, they were less likely to fuck around. Finally, I replayed my interrogation of Tiberius...

********

Tiberius was slumped in his chair; the worn, haggard look of abject defeat seemed to have sunk into his very bones after witnessing my systematic dismemberment of his most carefully laid plans. His face was practically singing the lamenting ballad of his subjugation and humiliation. I leaned back in my chair and looked at him, my elbows resting on the obscenely comfortable armrests and my fingers steepled below my chin.

"Now... tell me about Rome."

Tiberius sighed. He knew enough of the mindscape by now to understand that simply knowing about something meant that he would have no choice but to share it with me. An Evo's city had a library, and by touching it, I could download every shred of knowledge that person possessed, but Tiberius was an Inquisitor, just as Toussant had been; there was no library. It made the process slower and clumsier, but at the same time, all the more satisfying in its completion. There was a humiliation to it, a psychological trauma of watching your own mind betray you and give away every one of your deepest-held secrets. A person's mind was the only true bastion of self that most people had. A home could be broken into, burned down, or repossessed by the bank. Where every Englishman could say that his home was his castle, that wasn't necessarily true. No, when it came down to it, home was just a place given meaning; the only real place anyone had to call their own was contained within the confines of their own skull. To have that place invaded was something most people would be horrified by. It happened to humans all the time without them ever knowing it, and Evos had turned a mind's infiltration into a sport, but an Inquisitor had been born and then grew up under the mistaken belief that anything inside their mind was safe from the outside world.

Until I came along, that is.

Tiberius was the second Inquisitor mind I had been in, and I was starting to get a truer appreciation of how they worked, at least compared to the average human or another Evo. I was right; Toussant had been a poor baseline by which to judge an intact Inquisitor mind simply because it hadn't been. That man had been broken in ways that should have driven him beyond the reaches of sanity. Except it hadn't, and now I was starting to understand why. An Inquisitor's mind was no less powerful than an Evos, but whereas an awakened member of my race had their mind exposed to the sun and to the world from the moment it came into being, an Inquisitor's mind was trapped inside the sealed lattice of their skull. It was isolated from the world; it was a true fortress, and it had never even occurred to him that it could be invaded, control of it seized, and have it used against him. For his entire life, Tiberius had trained his mind to be a vault of information and comfort, a place he could retreat to whenever he chose. It was his sanctuary, and here I was, sitting in a chair that his mind had conjured up for me as if offering an invitation and was spilling every secret he had held within it.

There was a cruelty to it—a degradation. And I watched as the sigh from the man announced his acceptance of his defeat. He knew he was about to die; he knew I was going to end him; I had made promises that this man was going to die screaming, and there was nothing on Tiberius's face that suggested he thought that to be a promise I had any intention of forgetting. This was a man who understood the truest meaning of defeat. The quicker he told me what I wanted to know, the quicker he would be allowed to die because now, after the burning pain I had flooded into him a few times already, he knew that I could make this torture drag out for eternity. Death was his only escape.

His mind, his fortress, his sanctuary... it had become his prison.

"The Praetorians hid away from the Roman empires and the church until the start of the Renaissance," he started slowly, his eyes fixed on the framed picture on his desk. "The war between the church and the Evos had been going on for centuries. At first, we were grateful for it, we recruited many of your brethren by offering them simple sanctuary from the Vatican. By the time of the witch trials and the religious Inquisition, though - like the Spanish Inquisition, rather than the Inquisition that you know now - we started to understand that the church was using people like me to hunt for people like you. Inquisitors killing Evos, Evos killing Inquisitors, it was a violation of every tenant we hold dear. They were perverting countless generations of unity and brotherhood. They had to be stopped. But the church was too big. The only thing we could do was to send our people into the Vatican itself, infiltrate its ranks, and try to rescue as many of our people as we could before the church got to them. For that, we needed a base of operations. Rome, for us, started there."

"Every other Praetorian outpost, every enclave, and every focal point of our order could be moved with a moment's notice. None were ever discovered, of course; the church thought we had died out with the fall of Constantinople, but we had seen what happened to communities of Evos who thought they were safe and were always prepared to move. The only part of our order that couldn't be moved was Rome. I suppose it becoming the center of our movement was purely an accident of logistics; it was the only recognized constant. Over the years, the power of the church began to wane. Sure, people were still religious, but the church had lost its power to dictate national policy. By the mid-1700s, the idea that the church could command the mobilization of armies and demand the annihilation of an entire race of people was almost laughable. I mean, it probably happened long before that, but that was the point our order felt secure enough to set down proper, permanent roots and where better than Rome? Rome had been the place where our order was born, it was the only place where any real contingencies had been made for defense, and it was where all our most important members were stationed, so that was where the Senate was rebuilt."

"Rebuilt?" I tilted my head, paying close attention.

Tiberius nodded. "Before then, the Senate was... nomadic, I suppose you could call them. They would never meet in the same place twice, and it traveled all around the world to hold its meetings. In the age of sail, it could take months just for them all to get to the same country, let alone move to another. It made the bureaucracy of the Praetorians too slow to function. Something would happen that needed to be discussed by the Senate; a location was decided on for them to meet, communications sent out to alert the members - no email back then - then each Senator would need to travel to that location to attend, by then, the information was grossly out of date, and the issue was no longer valid. Take the New York Slave Revolt or the Huililche rebellion against the Spanish Empire; both of them happened in 1712, and both of them had been over for months by the time the Senate sat to discuss the possibility of Evo or Inquisitor involvement, or if there was any opportunity to further our cause. That was the catalyst. It was decided that the Senate would be permanently relocated to Rome. By 1750, that is what had happened."

"So the Senators are your leaders," I nodded. "Is there an overall leader?"

Tiberius shook his head. "Not since the death of the last Roman Emperor, no. We would be described as a republic these days. Technically, a place is held for the rise of a new Emperor, but the Dynast holds that position for now. He is more of a figurehead, though; he has no real power."

There was that title again.

"Yeah, I have questions about the Dynast; we'll circle back to that," I nodded, waiting for a second to let the wince on Tiberius's face fade away before I continued. "So tell me about these Senators."

"I don't know much," he said carefully. "It's like the Roman Senate of old, where there were lots of well-known Senators, it's more like a business or maybe a military. Each Senator is responsible for a certain area of operations, whether geographically speaking - as in they are responsible for a province - or they are in charge of an operation. The only Senator a Praetorian is ever aware of is the one at the top of his chain of command. That's why I didn't know who Toussant's superior was; we answer to different Senators, and we know nothing about each other's operations. We work in cells, and because each cell only has information about the Senator at its head, no one part of the order can compromise the rest. Only the Senators have information about the whole order."

Well, it looks like a trip to Rome is on the books, then.

"So, who is your Senator?"

"Herman Meisner," Tiberius answered simply, not because he was intentionally obstinate but because that—and the orders he passed down—were literally all he knew about the man.

"Okay then," I nodded. "Let's move on. One of your friends has already told me about your infiltration and manipulation of the Conclave, and you confirmed that you already have people in their highest ranks. Care to tell me who they are?"

Tiberius gave me a pained look. He had no idea. "It's not in my purview," he tried to explain. This cell bullshit was incredibly frustrating when it came to busting their whole organization wide open. Yes, of course, that was the whole point, but it was really fucking annoying. "Then why don't you tell me what you do know?"

"Because I don't want to," he replied, "And because you are going to kill me as soon as I do."

I blinked at him and then rolled my eyes. "Okay, fine. Let me rephrase. Tell me what you know."

Tiberius sighed. Phrasing my demand as a question gave his mind the opportunity to think of the literal wording of it and only think of that. The straight-up command forced his mind to think of the answer whether he wanted to or not; his lips simply moved automatically. "I am responsible for tactical operations and for the conversion of captured Evos and Inquisitors to the Praetorian cause," he explained. The pained look on his face made it clear that he was more than aware that every word brought his death closer. He had been absolutely right about that part. "For that, we need intelligence. We know where the Conclave has its entrances, like the one at the Bastille or the British Library; they are a good spot for scouting low-ranking members. But we also know about all the gatherings, when and where they are, and who is expected to attend. We know the rough geographical location of almost every member of importance, we have been able to influence policy decisions made by the Archon, and we have been able to access and then destroy some of the records kept in their vaults. I don't know who they are, but for that level of access, there has to be a fairly high number of them, and at least some of them need to be in positions of power. We have also been able to maintain the cover that our attacks were really carried out by the Inquisition, maintaining the illusion of war. I had assumed that was the Archon himself, but..."

"But you don't know for certain," I huffed. It was good to have confirmation, but I had already guessed this much from what I had learned elsewhere. "Alright, what about the Sect?"

"Same thing," Tiberius shrugged defeatedly. "We have enough information about their council and where their collective is anchored to be able to scout their members. We know they are more combat-proficient than the average member of the Conclave, too. I'm not sure if we have been able to influence policy there, though, so our agents could be anyone."

I nodded slowly. "You said a few things I would like some clarity on," I said after a few moments of thought. There was no point trying to press him for information he didn't have. There was still a battle going on in the real world, and this guy was about to suffer enough, anyway. He couldn't hide things from me if he tried, so I would be wasting my time repeating the same questions over and over again. "What is the Central Nexus?"

"It's the communications hub of our order. Back before the Senate had settled in Rome, they were the only people allowed to know the location of our senior members, so all communications were passed to them, and they would forward them on to wherever they were needed. They still provide that function, but only for reports and receiving orders that have come from outside my chain of command."

"Give me an example."

"Well, all the information we got from the Inquisitors we took from Donetsk was uploaded to the Nexus. I don't know where it went from there, but I assume that it was put somewhere that our leadership can access if they need it. The orders to give tactical and logistical support to Marco and Montreaux came from outside my chain of command, so I received them through the Nexus."

"What about Toussant?"

"That was an internal operation; that one came from Senator Meisner."

"Good to know. So, basically, they are like a switchboard service, disseminating information and passing along communications..."

"Yes, basically."

"Sounds like a bit of a strategic weak spot in your order to me, T," I said, leaning back into my chair. Tiberius didn't answer. "Where do you think this Nexus is located?"

"I don't know."

"Take an educated guess."

Tiberius sighed again, his posture crumbling each time his mind gave away information he would rather be kept secret. "If the Praetorians have any sense, they will keep it spread out, have people doing it from home or something. That way, it would be less of a strategic target. But..."

"But..."

"But that's expensive and inefficient. The Senate is moving to centralize things. The Nexus would be one of the first parts of the Order they would consider."

"And if they centralized it, they would put it..." I left the leading question hanging.

"Probably in Rome as well."

"Excellent, two birds, one stone. Now, what the fuck is the Dynast?"

Something strange happened. Tiberius opened his mouth to answer, just as he had for every other question, but he faltered, frowned, and then closed it again. It took a few moments of me staring at him, watching him closely for him to answer before he spoke again. "I don't think I know," he finally said.

"That's an odd choice of words."

"The Dynast was a prophecy," Tiberius sighed again, this time more at what he was saying rather than the fact he was saying it. "From the last days of the Western Roman Empire. One of your kind, an Evo - a very powerful Evo - apparently gained the power of foresight. He foresaw that a new Emperor would rise to lead the Praetorians, born of nothing, no noble birth, yet the noblest and strongest of all of us. Of course, nobody believed him, but there was enough uncertainty about it to make the Dynast a figurehead at the council. He is, nominally, our leader but had no real authority."

"Then why did you call it Blasphemy when your man out there..." I tossed a thumb over my shoulder to gesture at the real world. "...called me that?"

"Conditioning, I suppose," Tiberius shrugged. "To question the Dynast is to question the Emperor."

"Then why did you look so uncertain just now?"

"He said you bore the mantle."

I groaned. "Dude, let me put it to you like this. If you tell me what I want to know instead of having to drag every answer out of you, I promise I will kill you with a lot less pain than I was planning to. What is the mantle?"

"I... I don't know." I rolled my eyes and was about to set the bastard on fire, but he carried on without any more prompting. "The mantle is supposed to be something carried by the Dynast. The one in Rome carries a staff, reminiscent of the old Imperial scepters. But... the prophecy said the mantle was one of responsibility, a merging of the heavens and the land, of air and fire and nobility... I don't know how that translated to a staff, and Nathan seemed to see something on you that he called the mantle. I... I don't know what to think of that."

Interesting. So Tiberius's reaction was what a mind looked like when it had serious doubts about something he had always thought he knew. I wondered if that was what the minds of religious people looked like when they grew up.

"Alright, to borrow a completely accidental method I used on your friend Toussant," I said, "Tell me something you think I would want to know." To be honest, I had run out of questions. I knew I would think of more later and kick myself for not asking them now, but I had the who, I had the how, I had the why, and I had the where, or at least I had as much of them as I felt I was going to get from a man with very limited answers. Right now, after the months of putting on an act in captivity, the battle in the mindscape, and the fact that I was well aware of the battle raging in the real world, I was more than a little tired, and there was still a lot left to do.

Tiberius looked at me for a moment before his eyes dropped. "There's nothing more. You have it all. Everything I can think of that a man trying to take down the Praetorians would want to know."

"Good," I nodded and stood up, the sound of the chair scraping across the entirely imagined hardwood floors echoing around the entirely imagined room. "Then it seems that we have come to the end of our acquaintance, T."

Tiberius nodded and looked around his office.

"You have any regrets?"

He thought about it for a moment but finally shook his head softly. "Aside from not killing you? No. I've had a good life, my family has been well taken care of, and I will finally be able to join my wife in the afterlife. I found a cause I believed in and fought for it; we may not agree on its virtues, but it was the great meaning of my life, and I gave everything I had to it. Wealth and power mean nothing at the end; it's only what you leave behind that matters, and I think I have left behind a world that was better than it had been had I never been in it."

I snorted. "You are a fanatic, T, right to the end. Becky was the sort of person who made the world a better place. She believed in things, too, and so did Faye. But those were things that didn't demand the murder of innocents to make them happen."

"All progress demands sacrifice," he held my eyes confidently.

"Ah, now that is something we can agree on. In this case, though, it is letting go of archaic beliefs and institutions that define people by the things that make them different, not by the things that make us one. You were in a position to make life better for everyone, you could have been part of the force that unifies the entire planet. Instead, you sought power for power's sake, and in doing that, you are directly responsible for the deaths of the only two people I have ever loved. This was always going to end in the death of one of us, but now that you know it's yours, I want to tell you one last thing before you die..."

The defiance stayed in Tiberius's eyes as he listened.

"...I'm going to burn your order to the ground, and you have seen enough of me today to know that I can do it. Your death marks the height of Praetorian power. From this moment onwards, it is a slow, inevitable march towards its death."

Tiberius tried to keep that defiant look, to appear stoic and unmovable in his faith, but I could see it in his eyes... he knew I was right. He opened his mouth to reply, but I didn't give him the chance for any last words. He hadn't earned them.

His body burst into flames.

True to the promises I had made to myself and to the memory of those I had lost, and as the skin bubbled and melted from his body...

Tiberius died screaming.

********

My eyes were never still as I replayed the events of Tiberius's final moments to the members of the Collective High Council. Flicking from one person to the next, looking for any outside signs that one of these people could have been in league with the Praetorians. Of course, outward signs didn't mean everything here, and each of them would be tested just as Agatha had: A quick jaunt through their mind to hunt for any prior knowledge at all, let alone complicity, with my enemy. But the facial expressions of the people around the conference table were all largely the same. There were a few looks of confusion at the start, shock at the revelation about members of the Sect possibly being involved, and then fear, possibly disgust, as they were forced to watch Tiberius's final moments. A prophecy, perhaps, of what would happen to them if their innocence was found to be lacking.

One face caught my eye. Matthew was Agatha's grandson; he and two other comparatively young members of the council seemed to all be sitting together on the far end of the table from Arthur at its head. The man to the right of Matthew was looking more than a little nervous, he was looking terrified. To be fair, watching a man's conscious mind being burned alive was not the most pleasant of viewing experiences, but although everyone around the table was showing some form of discomfort and disgust at the scene, he was the only one showing outright fear.

"He's about to bolt," I passed to the others, my eyes fixed on the fidgeting, sweating, terrified-looking man. "Five, four, three, two..."

The man's chair hit the deck as he burst to his feet and shot toward the door. Every other set of eyes in the room shot open and snapped onto the bolter.

"Damn, I was close."

I rolled my eyes as I watched him run. Every stare was fixed on him, but his were locked onto me. So much so that he seemed rather surprised when he ran headlong into Fiona, who had deftly stepped to the side, then forward while swinging her arm outstretched to clothesline him. With his throat suddenly halted in its tracks, the movement of the rest of his body was carried by his own momentum; his legs swung up into the air until they were almost parallel with the ground before he dropped onto it with a grunt.

"Well, It looks like we have our first volunteer," I said with a deep breath, pushing myself off the table with my hands, turning, and walking over to the man groaning on the ground. Just as in the battle at the Praetorian compound, this man was being held inside the Collective purely by my overwhelming will. "It's Alexander, right?"

Predictably, the man didn't answer. To be fair, Fiona's blow to his throat was making it rather difficult for him to get a full breath, but I seriously doubted he would be singing like a canary even if his throat was functioning entirely as it should be.

"Well, Alexander," I stooped down next to him. "This can go one of two ways," I put my hand on his chest. "You can tell me, and everyone else, what we want to know... or I can make you. For reference, the second option is going to be very unpleasant. It will hurt a lot."

The man, wide-eyed with fear and hyperventilating, like he had just run a marathon, looked up at me. "Okay, Okay, I'll tell you, just... please don't..." he glanced back at the table, not the people around the table, but at the table itself. The meaning was clear...

Don't burn me.

"I'll make you a deal," I said, taking my hand off Alexander's chest and standing myself back up. "You tell me everything... and I really do mean everything... and they will let you go."

"What about them?" he glanced at the rest of the council members. Some of them, Matthew and Arthur particularly, were wearing expressions of shock and confusion; neither of them had expected the allegations to be true. Other members, like Agatha, were looking downright livid.

"The more pertinent question is what they'll do to you if you don't tell me. My patience is already strained after the day I've had, and you are hanging by a very frayed thread. You won't be walking away from here a happy man, let alone a free one, but tell me what I want to know, and I will make sure you do walk out of here."

"That is not your decision to make!" Arthur bellowed behind us, apparently transitioning from the shocked camp to the furious one.

I turned slowly and glared at the man. "I'm sorry, did that sound like a request? Did you think I was giving you an option? Your entire fucking collective is under audit, dipshit. You can cooperate, or you can take your chances trying to force the issue. You had your chance to be on my good side; you chose not to, so sit down and shut the fuck up!"

By the look on his face, Arthur wasn't expecting that outburst.

Why do people who fuck me over still expect me to be nice to them? Why can't people take responsibility for their actions?

I growled and turned back to Alexander. "Ten seconds and the offer expires," I said levelly at him. Ten, nine, eight..." I was counting down pretty quickly, not giving him much of a chance to make his decision. "...Seven, six..."

"Alright!" he yelled, cutting me off. "Alright, I'll talk."

I flicked a look to Fiona and Charlotte, and both of them stepped forward, effortlessly scooping him off the floor and dragging him to sit at some random chair at the conference table. I walked around to the other side of it and looked at him. "Let's start at the beginning. When did the Praetorians recruit you?"

"I... I wasn't recruited," he sighed, rubbing one of his hands around his other wrist. "I was always a Praetorian; they awakened me. I was a Praetorian first."

There were a few gasps of shock from the rest of the council as they moved closer to listen.

"But... you've been here since you were 18!" Matthew, Agatha's grandson, said incredulously. "You've been here for more than seventy years."

Alexander nodded. "I was awakened at 15. I spent two years with them learning to be an agent, then Marco re-awakened me..." he bounced his fingers with air quotations. "But that was just an act so I could be brought into the Conclave. Six months there just to build up a back story and to play that part that I was coming to the Sect with a genuine grievance, and then... I came here."

"But why?" Arthur said in almost a whine as if every syllable of Alexander's testimony was inflicting physical pain on the man. To be fair, the hurt and anger on his face were almost enough for me to discount him as being involved in anything nefarious there and then. I mean, he would still be checked, but now I would have been pretty surprised if I found something.

"It's their... our mission: to reunite the two species under one Order. To do that, they needed information."

"And you gave it to them," I said. It wasn't really a question, but Alexander nodded anyway.

"Are there others?" Alexander hesitated for a moment before sighing and softly nodding. "Who?"

"I was the only one on the council," he replied, looking around at the gathered group before looking back at me. "But I know you're going to check that anyway. There were five others. Mason, Andrew, Sarah, Irene..." he turned and looked back at Charlotte. "...and Rachael"

"Rachael?!?" Charlotte gawked. "Rachael?!?"

I blinked over my shoulder at my stunned, jaw-dropped friend. "Who's Rachael?"

"She's my Sis..." she stopped herself, burying her face into her hands.

"When people are brought into the Sect," Agatha explained. "They are paired with someone here, a bit like a mentorship, but... more. They are called brothers or sisters, it's a relationship that often becomes as close as family and is a big step into letting go of biological, human family. Charlotte was paired with Rachael. In all but the most biological terms, they were sisters."

"Where is she?!?" Charlotte snarled at the room, not asking any person in particular, but it was clear it wasn't a rhetorical question.

"I saw her out by the fountain earlier, I think," An equally shocked-looking woman in the crowd spoke out.

Charlotte didn't even nod in her direction; she just spun on her heels and stormed out of the room. I cast a glance at Fiona. "Keep her safe," I said. Fiona, her eyes having followed Charlotte, shot me a look and nodded before turning to jog after her.

I turned back to the group. "Do you have people to go get the others? Andrew, Mason, Sarah, and Irene?" Agatha nodded and stepped out of the room as well.

I returned my attention back to the sheepish looking Alexander. "So, what sort of information did you feed them?"

"I gave them... whatever they asked for; how many people were in the Collective at any one time, when council meetings were held, what was discussed, and the outcome. They just wanted me... to watch."

"How did you pass that information back?"

"Through the Nexus," he answered simply, waiting until I had raised an eyebrow at him for him to continue. "There is a hidden portal to it on my computer at home, in the real world."

Jeeves?

"It shouldn't be too hard to crack, Sir. Not with the decryption key we got off Tiberius, although I recommend heading there next."

Got it

"Did your information lead to any of our people being killed?" Agatha spoke from behind me, pulling my attention back to the room.

"No... not my information, no."

"That was a little cryptic, Alex. You can do better than that." I held the man's fearful eyes.

He sighed and dropped his head. "Marsha," he said heavily, a few gasps sounding through the room. "She and Mason got close. I think she found something she wasn't supposed to. I... I don't know. But I know he was heartbroken about her; I don't think it was his call."

"She threatened the mission, so the decision was made for him?" I confirmed. He nodded mutely, his eyes now locked shamefully onto the table. "Who told the Praetorians that she was getting too close?"

Every answer he was giving now was preceded by a long sigh, as if he knew that the hole he was digging for himself was getting deeper and deeper. "He did. He reported it to Tiberius."

"What are their plans for us?" Arthur spoke up again. Technically I had told him to shut up, but it was a fair question, and he wasn't trying to impose the stamp of his perceived authority onto the interrogation.

"As far as I know, they don't have any, at least not in the short-term. You're..." he swallowed hard, visibly shrinking. "You're too small. You don't pose any real threat or potential to the Praetorians. Their plan is just to integrate you when the time comes."

"By force?" I pushed.

"I don't think they want it to come to that. They don't want to harm any Evos. But..."

"But yes," I finished for him. "If it's necessary, they'll do it by force."

Alexander nodded.

"We'll fight!" A voice came from the back of the room.

"Bit late for that sentiment, isn't it?" I shot my remark in the general direction of the man's voice.

"You'd lose," Alexander sighed. "That's one of the things I'm supposed to report back: if there is anyone in the Sect powerful enough to challenge me."

"You?" I squinted at him. "Why would they need to be powerful enough to challenge you?"

"Because I'm about average, in terms of power, for the Praetorians. If someone doesn't pose much of a threat to me, they wouldn't stand a chance against our armies. Only you," he nodded to Agatha, "Only you would be noteworthy."

I hadn't really considered it before, but as I turned to look at the old lady, I was forced to admit that she was considerably more powerful than anyone else I had met in the Sect. She was woefully, almost comically weaker than I was, but she could easily be considered the strongest member of the Collective.

"We are much stronger combined," Arthur seemed to bristle at the implication that this little shit smear could take him in a straight-up fight.... Even if the shit smear was absolutely correct.

"Yeah, I know," Alexander nodded with another sigh. "But so are we, and if every single member of the Collective banded together in one place, at the same time, to put up a defense, the Praetorians would be able to overpower you with about twenty people... He took thirteen in that battle, and I knew a few of them," He nodded to me. "They were... considerably stronger than even I am. I'm sorry; I don't mean that to be insulting; it's just the truth. I just can't imagine why you wouldn't want to be a part of a greater whole, though."

"Because you killed some of us!" Matthew growled; he still hadn't calmed since the initial discovery of Alexander's true nature.

"One person!" Alex yelled back at him defensively. "You would give away a Utopian future where all of us are able to live freely and openly over one person?"

"But it wasn't one person, though, was it?" Agatha added. "We heard Pete's testimony from the Inquisition. They haven't been responsible for an attack against us in more than two hundred years. They were all either attacks from the Conclave - back during the war - or attacks from the Praetorians. A hell of a lot more than one person has been lost to you people."

Alexander flattered. "I... I don't know; that had nothing to do with me."

"Seventy-three," Agatha said, stepping forward to stand next to me. "That's how many we have lost to so-called Inquisitor raids since the Philadelphia accords were signed. God knows how many the Conclave have lost. For an Order that claims to have our best interests at heart, you seem to be killing us all the time."

Alexander was frowning, his eyes still locked on the table. The logic of Agatha's argument was irrefutable, and yet this seemed to be the first time he'd ever had the facts put together in front of him in a manner that forced him to confront the reality of the situation. Finally, after a few moments of silence, his face hardened, and he looked up, first at me and then back to Agatha. "If the Senate decreed their deaths necessary, then it's not my place to argue."

"You son of a...!" Matthew roared out a bellow and lunged forward, his fist pulled back to cave in the face of the seated traitor. Fortunately - although I couldn't say for whom - the loud crash of the main doors being kicked open pulled his attention, along with everyone else's - to the meeting hall entrance. Charlotte, a face like thunder, stormed in, dragging the kicking body of another woman by her hair across the ground before flinging her into the base of the chair beside where Alexander was sitting.

"Pete, meet Rachael," She hissed venomously. I rounded the table to look down at the disheveled, sobbing pile of female form on the floor. Rachael was a fairly attractive-looking woman, a few years older than Charlotte by outward appearance, or at least she would have been fairly attractive if it wasn't for the blood leaking from her nose, a cut in her lip, and an appearance that said she had been dragged painfully by her hair from where Charlotte had found her... and that place was not close by. I cast a look over my shoulder at Fiona - who had followed the pair into the room. She just smirked at me and shrugged.

Rachael was still crying, one of her hands cradling her cheek where - assumably - Charlotte had landed one of her punches. By the looks of it, she hadn't stopped with just the one, either. "She hit me!" she suddenly screamed out, looking around at the council members as if they were going to do something about it. In only a few seconds, though, she seemed to grasp the situation, first from seeing Alexander sitting meekly in his chair and then from the accusatory glares from everyone else in the room. "Oh God!" she yelped, seeming to understand the situation she had found herself in; she scrambled to her feet and bolted toward the door.... Only to run straight into another one of Charlotte's swung fists. Rachael hit the deck with a thud and a grunt, her hands working to cover what was left of her nose as Charlotte's steel grip wrapped around her hair and yanked her toward the seat next to her fellow betrayer.

A few moments later, four more people - presumably Mason, Irene, Sarah, and Andrew - were brought into the room. It only took one look around for them to all understand the nature of their summons and one by one, their shoulders slumped, and they took their seats next to their friends.

It only took about ten minutes to get them to place their hands on the table - although I still wasn't sure of the significance of that yet - and show each of the five newcomers the same memories I had shown the council, plus my point of view while watching Alexander being interrogated. By the end of it, they were all as subdued as Alexander was, all as despondent, and all as... torn, for lack of a better word. Despite their treason, despite their betrayal of their friends, none of them seemed to harbor any ill-will at all toward the people of the Sect. They seemed to genuinely believe that the Praetorian cause was one that would encompass all of the secret orders of our species and that we all were, in one manner or another, cousins rather than hated enemies.

"There were so many times I wanted to tell you." Rachael - still crying - pleaded in the general direction of a thoroughly disinterested Charlotte. "We are sisters, we're family. I told the Praetorians that this way of welcoming new people into the brotherhood was much more effective than the current process."

"You mean the imprisonment and torture of any potential member? Whether they actually want to join or not?" I almost laughed.

"Yes! Exactly!" Rachael nodded enthusiastically as if that process was the most normal thing in the world. It took me a second to realize that all six of these people would have had to have gone through some variation of my ordeal in Russia to have been accepted into the Praetorians. "That is a war measure, to make sure we are secure, but in the future.... Charlotte, my sisterhood with you has meant more to me than you could possibly imagine. Being your sister is..."

"Over!" Charlotte spun around and let her venomous, icy stare bore into the woman. "Even if you somehow manage to survive this war, you're dead to me!" she snarled, spittle flying from her lips with the fury behind her tone.

Rachael almost collapsed into her seat, sobbing in heartbreak. It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for her, but at the same time, Charlotte, my friend, was feeling it just as acutely, but with the bitter alloy of betrayal mixed in with it. She was barely holding it together.

Over the next hour or so, they were all questioned in the same way Alexander had been, and all of their answers lined up. Being in the mindscape, their ability to lie, at least to me or Agatha - the only two people in the room more powerful than they were - was severely limited. Mason had the worst of it, rightfully being blamed for the capture and execution of Marsha, but even I could see that the woman's death had haunted him. He really had cared for her - maybe not in a bonded sort of way, but certainly in a more normal relationship dynamic - and her loss seemed to have had a marrow-deep effect not only on him as a person but on his overall faith in the Praetorians. He had pleaded with Tiberius to spare her, he had threatened to quit, he had threatened to come clean to the council, but the threat of The Judge being dispatched to silence him and then silence anyone he had told had been enough to close his lips. From that point onward, he could almost be said to have been operating under duress. The Collective, however, Charlotte included, had been less than sympathetic.

It was only Andrew who had seen the attacks of the past and the claims of the modern Praetorians as something that were so glaringly at odds with each other. He claimed that those contradictions had troubled him deeply, but they had all happened before his time; he had assumed that a different tact had been taken by more modern leadership. He hadn't known, as I did, that Tiberius had been responsible for it all and had fallen into an almost thoughtful silence when I pointed that out.

But it was the moment when I showed them Becky's fate, her final moments, Toussant's madness, and Tiberius's reaction to the whole thing that really threw most of them. Rachael and the oddly quiet Sarah were openly crying. Andrew must have said the word "but" about twenty times, hoping his brain would fill in the justification for him, only to have it come up empty. Mason and Alexander just stared at each other in astonished disbelief.

"No," Mason finally said, "No, it can't be. You're wrong."

"I'm absolutely not wrong," I leveled my gaze at all of them. "That happened. Becky, Mary and her family, my parents, they were perfectly happy to murder innocents just to get to me. That is the organization you represent. What would they have done to the Collective if they hadn't converted peacefully? How many families would have been killed to force the issue? Would you have been okay with that? With doing that to people you say you care about?"

To be fair to her, Rachael turned and looked at Charlotte. My strawberry blonde friend didn't even deem her worthy of a returning glance, but the meaning was clear. Rachael really did consider Charlotte as close as family, and by extension, Charlotte's biological family - whether she was close to them or, like me, not - were an extension of her as a person. Rachael was being faced with the very real prospect that her allegiance to the Praetorians was entirely and completely at odds with the affection she held for the people of the Sect.

"This is who you are," my eyes flicked between each of them. "This is what you represent. Mason, whether intentional or not, you got Marsha killed; I know this because Becky was killed just for the crime of knowing me. Rachael, you may never have wished any harm on Charlotte, but you also know that there was no way she would have just rolled over for the Praetorians; this is what they would have done to her. And all of you, any of you who decided that was a line you wouldn't cross, they would have done it to you. That is irrefutable, just from what you have seen today. That isn't an opinion; that isn't open to interpretation, and that isn't a matter of perspective. That is a fact! It is a demonstrable, pervasive, deliberate part of their entire ethos. Jesus, they tortured you as fucking children before they allowed you to join them. You were what, 14? 15? Younger? When you were awakened. How can you justify that?"

"It's all we knew," Rachael cried, her voice quivering as she tried to suck in a breath around every heavy sob. "Then we were sent to the Conclave, and they were a bunch of egotistical assholes, only held in check by the threat of the Inquisition that the Praetorians had manufactured.... Then we came here and..." she broke down crying again, unable to finish her sentence.

"It was paradise," Mason continued for her. "Peace, friendship, mutual support, mutual defense, brotherhood—it was everything the Praetorians had promised us. But to get it, we needed to break the Sect and the Conclave and unite under them. Once that had happened, we could all live like this. I... we... just wanted this for everyone. We saw what could be, and it made our mission to achieve it for everyone that much more important. But... then they killed Marsha. I couldn't imagine anyone in the Praetorians killing her just because she may have known something she shouldn't have."

"But that's why it would never work," Arthur said, rubbing his hand over his face after, at some point, returning to his seat to watch the proceedings. He looked defeated. He had started this meeting confused; he had no idea what I was talking about. As it was explained to him, he became more and more defiant, not willing to believe any of his people could be a part of what I was accusing them of. Now, though, he was faced with the crystal clear clarification that some of his own people, including a member of his own council, were not who they said they were. The entire foundation of trust and mutual interdependence that that Collective was built on was crumbling to rubble before his eyes. And he had missed all of it. "The Praetorians want power, they want it all, they want the world to work the way they deem necessary. They are no different than the Conclave were back when we split from them. You can't enforce paradise; you can't even enforce cooperation. It has to be by consent. Ruling through fear and intimidation never works, it can't, it is against our nature. If they knew themselves even half as much as they claim to know us, they would understand that already."

Mason seemed to nod absently as if this was a thought he'd already had many times before. The rest of them seemed to frown, like this was the first time it had floated through their admittedly brainwashed minds.

Unfortunately, being in a communal part of the mindscape meant that the "tell me something you think I should know" trick wouldn't work. It was easy to tell that none of them had been lying, but lying and withholding something are not necessarily the same things, at least not in terms of mental processing. I would need to deal with each one of them individually, and that would take time. "Are all five of these people in the Mansion?" I asked nobody in particular.

Agatha shook her head, "Irene isn't; the others are."

I looked over to Irene and arched an eyebrow, the question obvious. "I'm at home," she sighed. I tilted my head to her, not willing to verbalize the next one. She sighed and parroted out an address. I turned and looked at Fiona, taking a moment to measure her against Irene in terms of power before nodding. Fiona was marginally more powerful than Irene, but not by much.

"Think you could go get her and bring her here?"

"Yeah," she smiled, "Jerry is local as well. Is it okay if I ask him to back me up, just in case?"

"Sure, that's a good idea. We'll keep them here until you have her, but don't take any chances, okay?"

"We'll be armed," She smiled, leaning in and kissing my cheek. "Besides, Jerry and I will fuck her up if she tries something." I chuckled at her choice of words and nodded.

"Be careful,"

"Don't worry, Boss," she grinned. "We won't let you down." Then she shimmered out of the mindscape. I blinked for a moment at the spot she had just been standing on. Boss: That is what she had always called Uri.

I shook the thought clear and turned back to the captives. A thought had just occurred to me. "There are six of you; there are, what? A few hundred members of the Sect? More? That doesn't seem like particularly good coverage. How do you know you didn't miss anything when making your reports to the Praetorians?"

"One of us had to be here at all times," Sarah answered, the first time she had spoken aside from answering the same initial questions that Alexander had answered. "And we always made sure to hang around close to the entrance to monitor the people entering the Collective."

"Is it possible that there are other spies here that you just don't know about?"

Sarah opened her mouth to answer, but the thought seemed to get stuck in her throat. She frowned and shared a few glances with her fellow captives. "I mean, it's possible," she finally admitted. "But I wouldn't have the first idea who. I've never noticed anyone else hanging around by the entrance, and that would be the only real way to monitor who was here."

The others all shook their heads in agreement. They didn't know either. I just nodded. "Okay, Agatha," I turned to the old lady. "I want you and Charlotte to round up every single person in the Collective, line them all up outside, and send them in one by one to be tested. I will start on the Council." Arthur rose to his feet, his face looking like he was about to strongly object to the plan, but instead, he held his hand out to me.

"I wish to be first." He said plainly. I held his eye for a moment and nodded again.

"Everyone else, line up behind him. Anyone who resists, in here or out there, will be presumed guilty and treated as such." I sucked in a deep breath and took Arthur's hand. In a few seconds, I was inside his mind. The man was an asshole, as poor of a leader - in terms of internal fortitude - as Thomas in the Conclave, but he was completely innocent. "Thank you, Arthur," I gave him another nod. "You're free to go."

"That... that was it?" He blinked at me.

"That was it," I shrugged. "You have no knowledge of the Praetorians inside your library or your vault, and there is no sign of any of Marco's corruption. That was all I needed to check."

I wasn't entirely sure what Arthur was expecting; perhaps I had gone a little overboard with the display of what I had done to Tiberius, but at the same time, the whole point of that had been proven by the reaction of Alexander. I had been perfectly prepared for violence; I had been ready to fight to reveal the traitors, but scaring the shit out of Alexander and the others had been just as effective.

Arthur's reaction to the testing had been enough to settle the nerves of the rest of the council as well, the fidgeting and the apprehensive murmurs died down almost immediately, replaced with a general air of people wanting to prove their loyalty and innocence. Finding the traitors had been a shock to the system for all of them. I don't think anyone other than Agatha really believed there was one right up to the point it was made clear for them. Having six of them - despite six traitors being less than one percent of the Collective's population - was not the end of the world in terms of the Sect's overall virtue, but, to the council, it was six too many. Everyone else now seemed to actively want the chance to prove that they were not another number to add to that list. By the time I had worked through the council, the news had spread to the people outside. The shock was quickly replaced with anger, and anger with determination to make the same affirmations as the council.

Nine hundred and seventy-four people. Nine hundred and seventy-four tests, and nine hundred and seventy-four innocent people, all grateful for the chance to prove their innocence. Each and every single one of them passed with flying colors.

It took three days of mindscape time to get them all processed.

An air of nervous celebration seemed to have settled over the collective over the course of those days. These people trusted each other with their lives, but the truth about the traitors had been enough to deeply and fundamentally rock that belief to its foundations, but being told, categorically, that those who remained were as loyal and honest to the Sect as they had always professed was... cathartic to the betrayal of the six. There were, of course, exceptions. Charlotte, for one, was crushed by the treason of Rachael, but she was far from alone. The six had made lives for themselves in the Collective, they had friends, confidants, and lovers in some cases, and those people were heartbroken at the betrayal they had suffered. Those people were now gathered in small groups, no doubt trying to offer the scant comfort that sort of pain would allow, trying to convince themselves - correctly, I would say - that there was nothing they could have done differently, that there was no way they could have known about the treason, and commiserating at how completely the wool had been pulled over their eyes. Charlotte was amongst them.

I just watched, alone, from a distance, sitting on a bench as we waited for Fiona to arrive at Irene's place. It was another beautiful day in the mindscape and the Collective was as vibrant and glorious as it had always promised to be. The Sect had set themselves up to be the antithesis of the Conclave, the counterpoint to their rigid formalities and hierarchy, and it had worked. The hippy commune seemed alive again, but there was no hiding that undercurrent of anger either. They had been dragged, kicking and screaming into the conflict with the Praetorians, they were now committed whether they wanted to be or not, and for every dozen or so grateful glances my way; there were one or two filled with resentment.

Honestly, though, I didn't care. I was too tired to give a shit. Each administered test had required a small burst of power, but after almost a thousand of them, I was pretty wiped out.

"What's going to happen to them?" Agatha's voice came from behind me before she walked around the bench and sat next to me.

"Who?" I frowned at her, before glancing at the groups of people around us.

"The six," she answered with a chuckle.

"Oh. I'll be taking them to Isabelle," I sighed. "All of the prisoners from the Praetorian compound are already with her, so it makes sense to keep them in one place. We'll do proper interrogations of them and the others there."

Agatha just nodded. I wasn't sure what she expected the answer to be, but she must have known as well as I did that letting them go or leaving them here simply weren't options. "Well, in that case, as the newly appointed leader of the council, I release the prisoners into your custody."

"Sorry, what?"

"Arthur stepped down," She sank back into the bench. "He has taken full responsibility for the security breach and the refusal to support you. He has resigned his position."

"But, there was no way he could have known about the Praetorians," I said, intentionally leaving out the firm agreement that his support could have made things a lot easier over the past few months.

"I know," she nodded. "But he wouldn't be swayed. I know you didn't think much of him as a leader, but he's a good man. He's just... naively optimistic about the motivations of our people. He didn't live through the war like I did."

I nodded. Naive was a good way to put it. "Well, I guess congratulations are in order."

"Pete, these people aren't soldiers," she nodded out over the crowds.

"Neither was I."

"And you're still not," she shrugged. "You are getting by on brute force. We don't have that option. Alexander was right, if we stand toe-to-toe against an organized army like the Praetorians, we will be slaughtered. You have our support, but I don't know how much help we can be."

"It's okay, Agatha," I smiled and nodded. "I have no intention of putting your people in harm's way. But I would strongly suggest that you start training them in better ways to defend themselves. I know you already do that, but you need to do more."

"We will. What are your plans going forward?"

"Meet up with the Inquisition and Isabelle, see what we can learn from the people we took in Russia, and see where we go from there."

"I'm coming with you," a familiar voice came from behind us. Agatha and I both turned to look into the sad, haggard face of Charlotte as she approached us from the direction of one of the groups. "I'm not being left behind. I'm done watching this from the sidelines and left at home to worry about you."

I just sighed. I could see from her face that she wasn't going to take no for an answer. "Okay, but you follow my lead."

"I will, I promise. Besides, it will be nice to meet Isaballe, and see Bob again." She finished with a weak grin. I snorted out a laugh and nodded.

Agatha looked off into the middle distance for a moment before looking back at me. "Fiona and her friend have arrived at Irene's house."

"Then I guess that is our cue to get going. I'll call Isabelle and arrange transport." I said as I stood, Charlotte moving next to me and lacing her fingers into mine.

Agatha, still sitting, glanced down at the touch and smiled warmly. "Good luck, Pete. If there is anything we can do to help you, please don't hesitate to ask. I have some work to do here, so I hope you will forgive me for not seeing you out."

"What about Philippa?" Charlotte asked.

"She's still sleeping," Agatha said. "She's safe here. I'm still the only one who knows she's here; I will keep looking after her. Evie is welcome to stay as our guest as well."

"Thank you, Agatha," I nodded. "I should be back in a few days, hopefully, we will have some more answers by then."

Charlotte squeezed my hand and looked at me with a smile. "Shall we?"

I smiled my farewell to Agatha and turned back to my friend. "We shall."