Despite her mother's explicit instructions, it was plain to see that Emma was not a happy camper. She was muttering, cursing, and mumbling insults under her breath with every brisk step taken through the labyrinthian halls of this mighty castle. Under normal circumstances, I would have had to kick into a jog to keep up with her a few times, but in all honesty, I wasn't in a rush; more than that, I wasn't in the mood to justify her attitude with the response of picking up the pace as she doubtlessly wanted or expected me to. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted; physically, I was fine. The previous night's sleep had all but replenished the energy reserves I had expended with the Sect and the infusion of power into Philippa when Faye had given herself over to healing our friend. More than that, the encounter in the Conclave, the rapid, unexpected, and utterly ruthless intervention of the Dragon should have, at least in theory, drained enormous amounts of energy from my powerplants. But it hadn't.

It was a strange sensation. I was acutely aware of the power it had taken to smash through the wills of the thousands of people there; I had more than a passing idea of how much energy it had taken to... well... spontaneously mummify Thomas and the other traitors as well. Each of them had taken more than the combined energy I had expended during my entire semi-voluntary stay with the Praetorians, and I had done it almost eighty times. Yet I couldn't feel a single ounce of power missing from my reserves. It was like the Dragon had taken on that responsibility himself. That, in turn, raised the interesting, albeit slightly concerning question of if the Mantle had a vast, unimaginable power source of its own or if maybe it had the ability to draw it from somewhere else because, despite the inconceivable amount of power it had used up in the dispensation of its justice, I had the distinct impression it could have kept that shit up all day.

The reason I wasn't in a rush had nothing to do with physical exhaustion and everything to do with the mental strain that was starting to push down on me again. The fight with Charlotte - despite us having seemingly made up since then - still bothered me, the encounter with the judge and all the questions that had dredged up, the loss of Faye, the change of leadership within the sect, the reappearance of Rhodri and all the self-recriminatory sentiments that had unearthed, and then, of course, the Conclave and the appearance of the Dragon.

Facing the overwhelming sensations of your own self-loathing, regrets, and guilt is never the best way to spend a Thursday afternoon, but - even though the Dragon seemed to have returned to its dormancy - those feelings still lingered. That self-doubt, those questions over the fundamental nature of who I was compared to who I thought I was or who I wanted to be, and the enforced realization that not only was I far from perfect, but had done some pretty fucked up things over the past few months, was a lot to take on in only a few short days. It felt like my life, or at least my sanity, was unraveling within me; every thread of who I was and who I aspired to be felt like it was flapping around within the storm of my identity crisis. When I returned from Ukraine, I had taken a literal and figurative long look in the mirror and decided I didn't like what I saw. I had resolved to be better, to do better, but it had taken the Dragon to really show me how long that particular road really was. And I was a long, long way from the end of it.

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well, that may have been true, but on the journey to my own redemption, it felt like I was still lacing up my boots and had a whole bunch of barriers to get past before I even took that first step. Just that thought alone was exhausting.

All of this added together made the inexplicably hostile Emma the last person on earth I wanted to deal with. I had no problem in facing accusations, especially ones I had already leveled at myself. What I had a big problem with, however, was having them leveled by someone unwilling to listen to my side of things or even understand that I didn't need her to point out my flaws. Emma, in her own immediately apparent self-righteousness, had already tried and sentenced me for crimes she had absolutely no comprehension of.

So fuck her; she could wait for me because I sure as shit wasn't in the mood to chase her down the hallways.

Finally, after what must have been close to fifteen minutes of walking, she arrived at a large wooden door - exactly the kind you would expect to find in an actual castle - opened it, turned, expecting me to be right behind her, then started to look pissed when she finally spotted me a few dozen yards back along the hallway and taking my own sweet time following after her. She started tapping her foot impatiently.

"I have better things to be doing than waiting for you!" she snapped as I closed the distance to about half.

"Yeah? Like what?" I shrugged back.

"Work! Maybe you've heard of the concept?"

I shrugged again. "Then go do that." I stopped, turned, and started walking back the way I had come.

"Where are you going?" She gawked at me. Apparently completely taken aback by my disregard for her sense of self-importance.

"You're not the only one with better things to do. I've got a war to fight and a manhunt to plan. I don't have the time, the patience, or the crayons to deal with a child having a tantrum because Mommy made her do something she didn't want to do."

She spluttered a few times. The shock in her voice probably matched the look on her face, but I was heading in the opposite direction, so I didn't actually see it. It was probably something I would have found funny, though.

Funny-that was something the old Pete had dealt with. New Pete didn't seem to have time for humor anymore. New Pete was cold, sharp, impatient, and utterly without the bandwidth to deal with petulant princesses who wanted to pick a fight for no other reason than to satisfy her own set of obsolete ideals.

"She gave you an order as well!" Emma's voice barked along the corridor after me.

"Nope," I called back without turning around. "She gave me a request. Isabelle knows I don't work for her, nor do I answer to her. We have a mutually beneficial partnership, and she asked me nicely. I certainly don't answer to you. I'll let her explain the difference, though."

"Everyone works for her." This one was tinged with a little doubt.

"You should probably look into that."

"Urgh, Fine!" She called after me after a few moments of what must have been some frantic mental acrobatics. "Could you please join me in my office so I can carry out my orders?"

I took a deep breath, spun around, and started walking back toward her, purposely keeping that same unhurried pace. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" I muttered as I stepped past her and into her office.

As rooms go, there are obviously lots of different types, but you can generally guess what sort of room you will step into based on the building in which it is located. You wouldn't, for example, walk into a pensioners bungalow expecting to find a fully stocked armory, nor would you expect to find an assembly line for car tires in a hospital. The same thing happened here. Every room in the castle was... well... it was a castle. They all had stone walls, and even the few that had been plastered were done so in a way that still left the shape of the stonework visible. It had been built before the invention of electricity, so every power outlet and every line that fed them were literally just bolted to the walls rather than dug into them, as you would find in more modern buildings. Everything echoed, everything felt cold and hard, and it seemed like it would be an utter nightmare to heat during winter time. Emma's office, however, looked nothing like this. It looked exactly how you would expect a modern, professional office to look; it was just sitting in the middle of a castle. It looked like someone had managed to surgically remove a room from some glass-fronted highrise in the middle of a metropolitan city's financial district and just dumped it into whatever wing of the castle we were currently standing in.

Large windows looked out onto the grounds, albeit a different set of gardens from the ones I had seen from my apartment here. The smooth walls had been painted an off-white cotton color and were lined with minimalist-style bookshelves and display cases. The floor was covered in a rich, thick, dark burgundy carpet, and in the middle of it sat a simple wooden desk. It was how I always imagined a corner office at a hedge fund to look. In fact, it would have looked a lot like the offices of some of my college professors, although admittedly, their bookshelves were a lot fuller and a lot less neatly organized.

I must confess, I was surprised, and I wasn't exactly sure why. Emma was a princess, literally, and she clearly had a very high opinion of herself, or at least she had a high opinion of her opinions. She seemed to be that infuriating sort of person that liberals like myself get criticized for all the time. Someone who has an opinion that they can't back up, decides that it is morally right, then berates anyone who dares to have an opposing one, labeling them as some variation of the word evil for even considering to have an alternative point of view. Personally, I have always thought that these sorts of people were idiots; sure, have an opinion, but also have the backbone to defend it intelligently. Of course, not all liberals are like that, and not all conservatives are lazy enough to think that they are, but Emma certainly seemed like she was. So, she was rich, spoiled, opinionated, clueless about the real world, self-righteous and self-important. Just the sort of person I would usually roll my eyes at and ignore. So why did her office look like she actually worked for a living?

Let me be clear here. We would all know what I mean when I say there are two types of book collectors: One that actually reads the books, and one that puts them on the shelves to display them, just so they could say they had them, without having the first idea what was written inside them. Emma, by outward appearances, would have easily seemed to fall firmly into the latter category, but every single book was not only dog-eared but full of bookmarks and post-it notes jutting out of the top of them. Every display case was filled, not with some pointless piece of sculpted art, but with pictures of her mother and other people I assumed were her friends and maybe extended family. There was even one with her and Bob. There were pictures of her in different parts of the world, some I recognized by the landmarks in the background, others in places that only held importance to her. Some were of her with groups of children, some were her at construction sites in obviously third-world countries, and none of them seemed to be the "rich kid showing off the places mommy paid for me to visit" kind of pictures I would have expected.

One corner of her desk had a laptop pushed at an angle, but the rest was filled with stacks of papers and meticulously handwritten notes, and the whole room smelled of sweat. Not that unpleasant musk of somewhere like a gym, but of a room that had far too little ventilation for the amount of time it was used. Emma clearly spent a mind-boggling amount of hours in here, and judging by her desk and the notes poking out of the top of books, she was obviously working hard for all of that time.

Okay, so re-evaluation: Never let it be said that I place the slightest amount of importance on faulty first impressions. Emma was rich, spoiled, opinionated, clueless about the realities of my world, self-righteous, and self-important, but with a good work ethic in a role she apparently took very seriously.

Fucking people. Why did they always have to be so damned complicated? Why couldn't assholes have no redeeming qualities? Because - and I loathed to admit it, even to myself - this was the office of a person I could respect.

In the few seconds it had taken these thoughts to run rampant and naked through my mind, Emma had closed the door behind her and moved to her side of the desk, gesturing me to sit into one of the simple leather chairs closest to me. Without a word, and still taking in the office around me, I took a few steps forward and lowered myself onto the proffered seat.

"Alright, look," she said after a few moments of looking at me and a sigh, "we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot." I was about to answer with something polite, or at least something that indicated a willingness on my part to rectify that, but no, she had to keep talking. "I'm obviously not happy being forced to work with someone like you, but I have my orders, and it's best if we keep things civil and get this over with as soon as possible."

"Someone like me..." I repeated, the question asking itself.

"Someone who thinks killing is a perfectly acceptable answer to a problem."

"Oh, is that who I am?" I asked, my tone giving off the distinct impression I was bored. I still wasn't looking at her. My eyes were scanning over the books to see if there were any I recognized.

"Isn't it? How many of our kind have you killed?"

"No idea," I shrugged.

"That many, huh? Let me guess," she glared at me. "All of them were in self-defense, and you are totally innocent."

I snorted out a laugh. "I am far from innocent, and no, not all of them were in self-defense, but most of them were. There were more than a few that I hunted down intentionally." My mind was thinking about the Inquisitors killed at the abandoned factory where Becky was murdered or Mary's house just prior to that. I wasn't sure if the Evos killed in the Praetorian compound counted as people I had hunted down. Technically, they had attacked me, but I had intentionally put myself in that position, and I had thrown the first punch, so to speak.

"And not a single shred of remorse," she scoffed.

"I don't remember saying that."

"You don't seem very sorry or guilt-ridden to me."

It was my turn to scoff. "Ah, so because you can't see it, it can't possibly be true."

"It doesn't matter what I see..." she started.

"You're right about that," I threw back, but she carried on regardless.

"There is never... never... an excuse to kill one of our own."

"They didn't seem to have gotten that memo. Should I have just let them kill me?"

"You just said that they weren't all in self-defense."

"I did. But I didn't say they wouldn't have killed me if I didn't act first. I also said most of them were in self-defense. You seem to have ignored that part."

"That sounds like a feeble justification to me," she said, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair.

I finally pulled my eyes away from her books and turned them to her. "It must be nice to be so wonderfully naive. Have you ever considered the possibility that the reason you get to have an opinion at all, or the reason you get to sit in this office, do your work, ask your questions, and pass judgments you have no right to, and ignore points that don't agree with your narrative, is because people like me do the fighting so you don't have to?"

"Oh, so you're a hero. Should I be thanking you?"

I snorted out a laugh. "You don't even know what you would be thanking me for, and even If you did, you wouldn't understand it. But no, I'm no hero."

"No, you're an animal. You think that might makes right. You believe any problem can be solved with violence, and you kill your own kind without a second's thought, too stupid to realize we are an endangered species."

I nodded slowly. "And you think that life... your life... would be possible without people like me. You're right: I am an animal. You have no idea why I have done the things I have been forced to do, but your people made me what I am. I wanted no part in this and was put into impossible situations... by your species, and I have done things that will haunt me for life. I have to live with that, not you. You will never understand what it took to push me to this, and you should be very grateful for that, but you are wrong. Not every problem can be solved with violence, but there are some problems that only violence can solve. Yes, I'm an animal. But sometimes, you need an animal to keep the monsters away."

My voice was calm and level. It wasn't a frenetic scramble to defend myself, just a simple statement of facts. Spoken with no more force or enthusiasm than explaining why her laptop needed electricity, I could see from the look on her face that it had struck a nerve.

"Violence is never the answer," she repeated, although I didn't know who she was trying to convince.

"Yup, and I hope you never have to find out how wrong you are."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"When the gun is pressed against your head, your opinions may change."

"I would never..."

"No? What if it was against the head of your mother, or your friends, or your children? What about then? Would you let them die for your principles?"

"Are you saying you lost children?"

"No."

"Yeah, I thought not," she rolled her eyes. She didn't like being challenged, and the venom in her voice was getting thicker with every syllable. "What about your parents? Were they killed in this entirely fictional and self-justifying scenario??"

"Yes," I answered simply. Emma blinked, and her lips parted in shock. "Friends too, also a girlfriend. None of them had any idea about any of this..." I waved my hand around the room. "...all of them were innocent, and this was before I became an animal, when I was mostly clueless about it all myself. They killed them anyway, just for the crime of knowing me. They killed them to get to me. So the next time they tried the same thing, I killed them first because they weren't going to stop until I stopped them."

Okay, it wasn't entirely accurate, but it was close enough to make my point, and the pained expression on Emma's face told me that reality check had hit her right where it hurt.

Nothing like getting bitch slapped by some facts, right?

"Why?" she finally said after at least a solid minute of her staring at me.

"Why what?"

"Why would they attack you for no reason? You said you were clueless about all this, so what was it that made them come after you and the people around you if you weren't a threat?"

I sighed and slumped back into my chair and sighed. "If you can work out the answer to that, let me know."

She frowned, looking down at something on one of her notes for a second before looking back up at me. "Then what is different about you? Compared to other Evos, I mean."

I shrugged again. "I guess there are two, but I don't know if one ties into the other. I have been told that I am one of, if not the most powerful Evo to have ever lived." She rolled her eyes a little but didn't say anything. "But I am also the only Evo to have ever been awakened during adulthood."

Her eyes widened. "You weren't awakened as a child?"

"Nope."

"But... I thought all Evos were awakened in childhood."

"So did they. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know how that happened or how that changed things, or even if that changed things. I don't even know if that is why I am as powerful as I am."

She frowned again, but this time, it looked more like an intense professional curiosity than the result of an attack on her beliefs. It was not something I was going to complain about.

"What exactly do you do here?" I finally asked. Emma had been sitting in thought for quite some time before I spoke, and waiting there, just watching her silently think to herself, was not a productive use of my time, considering everything I still had to do. Besides, I hadn't quite gotten over her attitude, and aside from those last few questions, she hadn't given me any reason to believe that her spontaneous hatred of me had worn off yet. I had learned long ago not to bother trying to change the minds of people who hated me for no reason. My parents had taught me that lesson long before I came into my powers, and it was one I was putting into effect again with Emma. She didn't like me, cool, have fun with that. I'm out as soon as I no longer have a reason to be here. The question I asked was to hurry that process along. I didn't really care about the answer.

"I'm part biologist and part historian," she answered after her train of thought was derailed.

Trains were, apparently, still assholes.

I gestured for her to carry on. It was an answer, sure, but not much of one. She sighed. "My job is to track the history of our kind, both branches of it, and also monitor any changes in our abilities. Who can do what, and so on, then look for patterns. The idea is to find common ground that can reunify our species into one, as it should be. Although I must admit, the information you brought us about the Conclave and the lies being told to the Evos there about the war still going on explains why it has been so hard to find Evo volunteers. I suppose I should thank you for that."

"Volunteers for what?" For a moment, I suddenly and fleetingly had mental images of involuntary medical experiments, chrome tables and screaming.

"Well, this, really," she gestured between the two of us. "Just talking, getting an idea of who they are, what they can do, how they see the orders they work for. That sort of thing."

"Hmmm, I'm sure you haven't been able to get many answers from Evos for those questions."

"No, not many. We have found the odd rogue, but they didn't have a clue about the Conclave or the Sect, and they could only talk about their own powers. Invariably, they set off to find the Conclave, and we haven't heard from them since." I frowned, in my city, Uri was suddenly paying very close attention. "What?" She asked, seeing my face.

"I'm pretty sure the Conclave, or at least the general population, haven't had any experience with rogues. In fact, they think they are a myth."

"I don't know what you're saying."

"I'm saying I don't think any of those rogues made it to the Conclave."

"What? None of them?!?"

"Not from what I know, no."

"But... where..."

"Dead, probably. Or they were snatched up by the Praetorians."

"Jesus," she pinched the bridge of her nose, her breath quivering a little as she looked back down at her desk. "We'd never heard of these Praetorians before you."

"Neither had I, nor had any of the rank and file Evos in the Conclave or the Sect. How many rogues were there?"

"Almost a hundred."

"Yeah, they definitely didn't make it there then," I shrugged. "There is no way that many rogues could have made it to the Conclave without Uri knowing about it."

"How can you be so flippant about it?!?" She suddenly yelled. "They were people!"

"And they were killed anyway. No reason, no motive; they had power, and someone else wanted it, so they were killed. Or maybe they were killed to keep the peace a secret. Or perhaps they were pulled into the Praetorian's ranks and are now out there killing other Evos and Inquisitors. This has nothing to do with being flippant, these are just facts, and facts don't give a single flying shit about your moral outrage. Do you think the world works the way you want it to, just because that's what you want? Fucking hell, you have no comprehension of how sheltered you are, and you have no idea what things are really like out there!" I barked back. "You don't like me, congratulations, I don't care. But taking your disappointment with the world out on me doesn't change anything."

"And fighting and killing does?!?"

"YES!" I yelled back, matching the intensity of her voice. "Because for every one of those monsters taken out, there is one less person out there hunting and killing the people you keep saying should be saved. There are two sides to this, Princess..." I could see by the way she bristled that she hated being called that, which was even more reason to call her it. "...that is what happens in a war! There is our side and theirs. It doesn't matter how much you or I want the war to be over; it is never going to happen while they want nothing more than to fucking kill us! And make no mistake, Princess, that is what they want. They will torture you to break you - there are rooms full of people who have already had that done to them only a few hundred feet from where you are sitting - and if that doesn't work, they will kill you without a moment's hesitation, and your moral outrage about it won't stop the bullet hitting your fucking head! You need to grow up!"

"Grow up? Who the hell do you think you are? I'm not a child!"

"Then stop acting like one! Because every time you dismiss the war or the fighting or the killing as something that shouldn't be happening, all you are doing is burying your head in the sand and doing nothing to stop this shit from going on forever! You are giving them license to carry on! Your skepticism may let you sleep at night; it may keep you sane, but it won't keep you safe, and it certainly won't save your species!"

"OUR species!" She practically screamed back. "You are part of it too!"

"Wrong again! I was born a human. I spent twenty years living as a human, and all I have known since I became one of you is pain, loss, suffering, and war! That is on you, all of you, not me! But as long as you people keep trying to fucking kill me, enslave the rest of humanity, or generally act like entitled little cunts just by virtue of how you were born, I am going to keep fighting back! I don't owe you or the rest of YOUR species a damned thing. The faster you realize that, the better. There's your answer. That's what's different about me compared to the rest of you. I don't want power, I have no intention of playing by YOUR rules, and I don't give one solitary fuck what you think of me!"

Emma blinked again. "Wait, what? Who is trying to enslave humans? Nobody in our species is unevolved enough to want that!"

"Jesus fucking Christ!" I laughed sarcastically. "All this moral outrage, all this bullshit about killing being wrong, and you don't even know what we're fighting against! Well, pay attention, princess, perhaps you'll learn something: That is precisely what the Praetorians want; that is what they offered me if I joined them: complete subjugation of the human race, all Evos and Inquisitors united under a single banner, as long as they follow their rules. Any outliers, any non-conformists, and any opposition are to be hunted down and slaughtered. The Inquisition? Gone. Me, you, your mother, anyone else in this castle, most of the people you have ever known? Killed unless they swear fealty to them. The Conclave? Gone. The sect? Gone. Only the Praetorians. Endless fucking war until everything you have ever known is burned to the ground, and they are all that's left. This isn't some idle plan; they are actively pushing their agenda right now, and you are sitting here arguing that we should all be sat down singing kumbayah, then having a fucking tantrum when that doesn't happen in reality! But do you want to know something? They are winning! And that should scare the shit out of you. But no, you just want me to apologize for doing what I have to do, for killing them when they forced my hand, for feeling bad for people who would happily see you, me, and everyone else we have ever loved tortured to death on a whim, and for defending fucking idiots like you! You are a painfully naive, spoiled little rich girl; I am a fucking soldier; there is no way on Earth you are ever going to get it, and you don't have the knowledge, the experience, or the authority to judge what a soldier is forced to do in war. So maybe we should stop wasting each other's time!"

"You don't get to speak to me like that! I am..."

"Or what?" I growled back. "What are you going to do? How are you going to stop me? Are you going to say please? Are you going to tell me how important you are? Are you going to tell me you're offended? Do you think that is going to work on them? That is what you don't get! These are just words, nothing more, and there is nothing you can do to stop me from saying them. How are you going to stop them from gutting you like a pig? Because that is what they'll do! Will you ask them nicely to stop? Will you tell them how naughty they're being? Will you throw another tantrum? Or will you finally pick a side, pick up a weapon, and do what you have to do to defend everything you love? Because I promise you, I fucking promise you, that day is coming! So come on, tell me, what are you going to do? You're pissed off, great, now what?" She clenched her jaw and held my eye but said nothing. "I didn't think so. Let me let you in on a little secret. The only right and wrong in this life is judged by the people who are able to enforce it, or at least defend it; anything else is just words!"

"So what?" She finally said back, her voice seething with anger and indignation. "We should all just go around killing each other? Let only the strongest survive? We should all become animals like you?"

I laughed. A bitter, hostile noise that sounded strange and foreign, even to me, as it echoed off the walls. "You couldn't become an animal if you tried. That is why you need people like me. No, we shouldn't go around killing each other, but there comes a point when you have to choose: kill or be killed, and yes, before you argue, it really is that simple. If the threat wasn't there, if the Praetorians weren't so hellbent on wiping out anyone who doesn't agree with them and enslaving the rest, then I would more than agree with you. But that isn't the world we live in. You seem to think that just because your species has the capacity to be better, they all should be, and you are right. But where your theory loses the argument is when you think that they all want to be better. They don't. Evos, Inquisitors, your species are no more evolved than humans in that respect: There will always be someone who wants power for power's sake, and they are willing to burn down the fucking world to get it. The problem is they have the capabilities to actually follow through with that. You don't understand how blind you are. You are a spoiled little puppy; totally convinced that the world outside your own experience is no more dangerous than the home you've been brought up in, so you wallow in the lap of your family, basking in your gilded cage, exposing your throat to predators you don't even realize exist. Well, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the predators are real, the monsters are real, and a guard dog at the gate is the only thing that keeps them away and stops them from tearing that pretty little throat out of your pretty little neck! Why do you think your mother wants to work with me? Why do you think this castle has security at all? Could it be because she understands the danger that you are all in? Could it be that instead of just waiting for the monsters to come, she makes preparations for when they do? Could it be because she knows more than you do and, like me, sees the need to fight to defend ourselves? Perhaps instead of barking impotently at the things you don't understand, you should just keep out of the way and let the guard dog do its job!"

Emma's eyes were bulging out of her head, but one of her hands absently reached up to rub over the skin on her throat. Maybe something I had said had finally hit home.

"Do you think I enjoy this?" I asked with a sigh after a few minutes of staring at each other. "Do you think I'm proud of the things I've had to do? Do you think I recognize myself in the mirror or like this new person staring back at me? Do you think I wanted to be this animal? The height of my ambition before all of this was not to die alone, to be normal. I would give anything to have that back, but it's not going to happen. I have already lost more than you will ever understand, and I've had to do things that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Yes, some of it was done out of anger; some of it was nothing but the hunt for pure revenge. I wish I could've lived without ever knowing what that kind of blinding pain and rage feels like, but I can't. But if I can stop someone else, even you, from knowing what that feels like, then I will do what I have to do. I'm already a lost cause, but I might be able to spare someone else from the same fate. I can bring justice for those who have been lost, and if - when the dust settles and the fighting is over - I need to pay some sort of price for what I have done, so be it. You think you know me, you think you have me all figured out, but the mark of a good historian is knowing that you don't know everything and keeping an open mind when presented with new facts. You obviously don't want to do that; you've already made up your mind. So I am going to go; you can tell your mother whatever you like about this... chat, but as long as you insist on applying your painfully narrow perspective to things you don't... can't understand, we are of no help to each other. You won't see past your own opinions, and I won't be labeled as evil, so we are wasting our time."

"You're right," she said. Her voice was significantly calmer than it had been only a few moments earlier. Calm enough to make me pause as I was pulling myself out of my seat. "I don't understand. I don't understand how violence, war, and death can be the answer."

"That's because you are asking the wrong question."

"So what's the question?"

"That's my point. There isn't one. This isn't a disagreement with the Praetorians where a dialogue could let us reach a compromise. They want us to submit. They want us to follow them and give ourselves entirely over to their ideals. They want us to believe that humans are the lesser species and should be ruled by us, that any who disagree should be culled from existence, that their way is the only way, and anyone who disagrees with that should not be allowed to live. Do you agree with that?"

"No, of course not."

"Then that is the end of the conversation. You are marked for death. There is no negotiation, no debate, and no compromise. You have rejected their offer, so you have to die. When they come - and I'm sorry to say that it is a when - what will you do?"

"I..." she paused. "Assuming you are right, I don't know."

I nodded slowly as I stood. "Then it's time to start getting your affairs in order. Because if I was one of them, that hesitation is all the time it would take to kill you. When the Praetorians attacked the party, they slaughtered almost a hundred people just for being in that room. They didn't even ask the question; they just assumed the answer and killed them. Over a hundred people were there, and maybe twenty got out unhurt. That number would have been zero if I hadn't acted; I would have been one of the dead. The girl I was bonding with was one. If they attacked this castle now, they would do exactly the same thing without a moment's hesitation. If you still feel the way you feel now after you have seen the bodies, after you have smelled the blood, after you have seen the piles of dead children in the frozen cold, after you have watched the people you love being blown to pieces or shot in cold blood, then I will listen to you. Until then, you don't have the authority to judge me. I know what real moral authority and real judgment feel like. I hope you never have to."

"But..." She frowned and made to argue as I finally reached my feet.

"Emma, I'm tired. Right down to my bones. I'm tired of hating myself. I'm tired of feeling like I'm to blame for things that have been done to me. I'm tired of fighting. I'm just tired of being tired. I want peace, I want to live a quiet life, and I don't want anyone to go through the things I have, but that isn't possible right now, and until it is, I have to fight. I've made my peace with that, and more importantly, I've accepted my judgment from the Mantle. That doesn't mean I'm happy with it, but I accept that's what it is. I genuinely hope you never have to come to the same realization, I really do. But I'm not going to be blamed, judged or criticized for it either. If you have some questions about things you need for your research, let me know. But if you want to spend the next... However long I'm here... hating me, that's fine too; just complain to someone else about it."

"The Mantle?" She asked, her voice now soft and timid as if my words had struck home with the subtlety of a hand grenade.

"The ultimate source of moral judgment For our people, I Guess." I shrugged again. I seemed to be doing that a lot recently. "Don't ask how. I don't know. I'll see you around, and keep up the yoga."

She blinked but didn't get a chance to ask anything else before I strode out of the door. Part of me felt better about myself; having to defend my actions, or at least defend myself against Emma's criticism, solidified my motives and acceptance in my mind. But at the same time, having to defend myself at all was another blow to my already frayed sense of self. If someone else could see me as the bad guy, then my actions couldn't be as justifiable as I had assumed. The Dragon seemed to have cleared me of any wrongdoing, or at least of wrong-doing on a scale that would require penance, and that had helped me deal with my own sense of failure. But having Emma come at me so viscerally; that was different.

I needed to kill something or fuck something. It seemed to work last time. Where was Faye when you needed her.

I sighed again, glancing up and down the cold stone corridor outside Emma's office and pulled out my phone. Hitting a few icons, I lifted it to my ear and let it ring.

"Hello?" Came the voice on the other end.

"Hey Agatha, it's Pete. I'm just calling to see if there's an update on Philippa?"

"Oh, Pete. It's so good to hear from you. There isn't much of an update, I'm sorry. Her mind has settled, she's still sleeping but her integration with Faye hasn't manifested any tangible results yet. There is no sign of the fracture anymore. That could just be because she's resting, though, Or it could be that she's healing. We still don't know, but you will be the first to know when she wakes up."

I sighed again. No news was good news, I guess.

"Thank you, Agatha. I hope to be back soon and come see you all."

"You're always welcome, Pete." I could hear the smile in her voice. "you'll always have a place here after everything you've done for us. How are things going on your end?"

I sighed. "That... is a really long story, I'm afraid. And one that I wouldn't be able to talk about over the phone..." That part was a lie; my phone and the computer it was linked to could be handed over to every intelligence agency on Earth, and not one of them would have the first idea where to start when it came to gaining uninvited access to it. I just didn't want to talk about things again. I was all talked out. My social battery, my patience for dealing with people in general, was well and truly worn out. The call hadn't contained the news I was hoping for, but it wasn't exactly bad news either, although I had absolutely no idea what to think about the lack of fracture in Philippa's mind. I would just need to get back there as soon as possible.

For now, I just wanted to be alone for a few moments. Just a little respite in the storm. A way to refill and regroup before the next big "fuck you" hit me.

Of course, that was always going to be too much to ask.

I groaned inwardly and silently as my eyes flicked upwards and along the corridor, only to spot Bob and Rhodri striding towards me, both of them seeming to be lost in conversation. It was Bob who spotted me first, a knowing smile creeping onto his face. "Pete. You're finished early. I was just escorting our friend down for his own interview with Emma." He nodded to Rhodri.

"Hi, both," I forced a weak, weary smile onto my face and nodded to the pair. "You agreed to talk to her as well?" I asked Rhodri.

"I couldn't think of a reason not to," he nodded. "If everything I thought I knew about the Inquisition was a lie or a manipulation to keep me in check, and considering they have been nothing but hospitable to me since I got here, then it only makes sense to get to know them and have a few of my own thoughts for a change. Make an opinion based on what I see, not on what I'm told, you know what I mean?"

I nodded. "Then I'll spare you the details of my meeting with her."

"That good, eh?" Bob smirked.

"I get the feeling you knew how that would go," I eyeballed him.

"We had our suspicions." He chuckled before turning to Rhodri. "It's that door there," He pointed out the door to Emma's office a dozen or so feet behind me. "Ask Emma to let me know when you're done, and I will come down to escort you back. I've been working in this Castle for the better part of a decade, and I still find it a little too much like a rabbit warren for my liking."

I didn't bother correcting him; Rhodri would have instantly memorized the way back from here and wouldn't need an escort, but I said nothing. This was still a secure, very security-minded compound, and Rhodri - at least to the Inquisitors - was an unknown entity. It was unlikely that Bob needed to show him anywhere or was under any other impression. It was much more likely that they wanted to make sure he didn't wander off to places he wasn't supposed to be. Rhodri doubtlessly knew this as well, but, playing the diplomat, he just smiled politely and nodded. "I'll see you later, Pete." He smiled.

"Good luck," I smiled after him, turning for a moment to watch him go. Rhodri was still an enigma to me. The man I had met at the party was brash, hostile, and arrogant. He was utterly convinced of his own abilities in that duel and had - in a manner of speaking - cheated to attain the position he had achieved in the rankings. But other than the fact he had been bonded with Neil - his partner in crime who had been killed during the attack on the party along with so many others - I didn't know anything about him. The others seemed to trust him though, but by that logic, they had trusted Sterling, too. I simply didn't know him well enough to form an opinion one way or the other. The man I had seen in him since his arrival at the castle was warm, friendly, dedicated to the cause, and resembled nothing of the dick he had been in the party. But at the same time, it was a party. I was the unknown then, maybe his behavior toward me had been a weird form of banter to him. I had assumed, at the time, that he had wanted to use my comparative inexperience to gain a few bragging rights at my expense, but that didn't seem to fit the man who was here with us now. Did I like him? Sure, he seemed nice enough, and - again - everyone else in my group was more than accepting of his return. Did I trust him? No, or at least not yet. I simply didn't know him well enough, and as Uri liked to say, trust was a rare commodity these days.

Bob cleared his throat, interrupting my thoughts, and I turned back to face him. "So, how did it go?"

"Ever watch a car crash in slow motion?"

Bob chuckled softly, but there was no missing the troubled look in his eyes. "That well, eh?"

I shrugged. I could have complained, I could have given out the same kind of rant I had dished out to Emma, but Bob was a friend, and that look in his eyes was enough to temper my... well, my temper. That was progress, right? "Let's just say she is a very strong-willed woman," I smiled.

Bob snorted a laugh and turned back toward the main part of the castle to walk with me. "I worry for her, Pete. I hope it's okay if I speak freely." He gave me a hopeful, sideways glance. I nodded for him to continue. "Isabelle blames herself. For generations, the Princess has been the de facto leader of our branch of the Inquisition, even though her mother is still alive and well. But Isabelle has been the champion for peace and for peaceful coexistence between Inquisitors and the Evos for as long as I can remember. We didn't know that we were once considered the same species, obviously, and I'm not sure that is where Isabelle saw us progressing to, but she has always been deeply troubled by the standoff nature of our relationship with the Conclave. She suspected something was amiss long before you told us about the lies being told there, but the scale of it was so much worse than we thought. But, for Emma, she has grown up in a world where she has been told, almost at every turn, that the relationship between our people is one that should be nurtured, that doing anything to damage it should be considered the highest of all crimes, that we should be living and working together to create a better world. It is a lesson she took to heart, and now..."

"And now," I finished for him, "she finds herself in the middle of a war where her kind is being killed left, right, and center, and it goes against everything she has ever been taught or thought to be true."

Bob nodded. "The problem is that we, Isabelle and I, are starting to see the error of our ways. What is it you said in Ukraine? Those who desire peace make ready for war. We never taught her that, in fact, that would go against everything she believes. That was our mistake, but, and I'm reluctant to say this, you may be the only one who is able to show her how the world really works because out of all of us, you are one of the only people we know who seems to really understand it."

It was my turn to snort. "Understand it? Bob, I'm running around like a headless chicken most of the time. Reacting to a crisis is not the same as being able to predict one. I don't understand shit."

"Exactly," Bob smiled. "The world isn't some nice, orderly set of events that morph peacefully from one to the next. It is chaotic, it is violent, and it is dangerous. You understand that. It has been centuries since the Inquisition has had to deal with something like that and we are woefully underprepared. The Evos, thinking that they were at war this entire time, are better suited, but they - as far as we can tell - have always been told that most Evos are friends and Inquisitors should be avoided; it's hardly a good battle tactic against this new enemy."

"So where does Emma come into this? I doubt you would go to all this trouble just to educate Emma in an effort to wise her up and clue her in to the reality of the world."

"Actually, it sort of is." Bob smiled weakly. "If anyone can work out a way to unify our people in a meaningful way, it is Emma." His smile grew to something that looked more prideful this time. "She really is brilliant at what she does. Put it this way, she theorized that we were all the offshoots of a single species years before you - or the Praetorians - confirmed it. She actually believes that we didn't evolve from humans but that humans devolved from us. That they are simply the offspring of our kind who were born without powers. Eventually, they outnumbered us and forgot about our existence. Add in the church and their zealous hatred of anything that threatens their dogma and humanity's general distrust of anything they don't understand, and you get to the world we know where our kind has to hide in the shadows away from the rest of the planet's population who don't even know we exist."

I nodded slowly, listening. "That... actually makes a certain kind of sense. It would explain a lot about the different power levels within Evos, at least. I always wondered what happened to the children who were born without our abilities."

"Yup," he smiled. "The rest of the people in her field thought she was crazy. They actually found the idea offensive. Then you came along and pretty much proved all of her other 'crazy' theories right overnight, and now she is being taken a lot more seriously."

"You would have thought that would make her a little more receptive to me, wouldn't you?" I observed.

"Well, yes and no. I suppose you have to see it from her side, too. She puts in years of hard work developing this theory and nobody listens to her. Then some random guy turns up having been put in a position to actually find proof that would have been impossible for her to obtain, and suddenly, everyone is singing his praises and not calling her nuts. That has to be infuriating."

"Yeah, okay, when you put it like that," I chuckled. "So what do you think she can do about all of this?"

"Damned if I know." Bob shrugged again. We seemed to be doing a lot of that. "Her mother and I think that she will be the one to crack this, but we think she needs all of the information available to her to do it."

There was that we again.

I frowned at him, the pieces suddenly falling into place. "Bob, who is your wife?"

Bob grinned wryly as he looked at me. "Not as easy to do this when you can't read someone's thoughts, is it?"

"Well, I don't think I have ever seen Isabelle without you around, and you talk about Emma like you have an equal opinion about her life as her mother. Is Emma your daughter, too?"

Bob chuckled and nodded. "Yes, she is. Isabelle is my wife."

"You're a prince?" I gawked.

"Well, again, yes and no. Isabelle is the one in the line of succession; I'm just the guy she's married to. I suppose I would be considered a prince-consort by UK standards, but it's not really a title we use here. I'm just Arnold."

I chuckled. "Sure you are, Prince Bob."

"I'm gonna regret telling you that, aren't I?"

"Fuck yes, you are." I laughed louder. "Well, Prince Bob, your daughter is going to be a royal pain in my ass."

"Pun intended?"

"Obviously."

Bob rolled his eye good naturedly. "Perfect. I'll leave you and her to..." He suddenly stopped talking as I froze. He looked at me, but my mind had been ripped from my body and was currently elsewhere. I had stopped walking and was staring into space with a vacant, blank expression on my face. "Pete? Pete, are you okay?"

********

Dust rained down from the ceiling with every subtle movement of the shattered building and every soft whisper of wind. Jean-Pierre Toussant hadn't moved a muscle in more than a week, lying on his back on a pile of rubble with a hole in his head.

The fires had taken three days to burn out, and he had almost been forced to move to another part of the former Praetorian compound more than once to avoid the encroaching infernos. The smoke had been thick and heavy; it would have been suffocating if it wasn't for the fact that the room he was lying in - once playing the part of Tiberius's office - had a hole in the roof, which let the smoke out. It was the rubble from the ceiling and part of the wall supporting it that was now serving as his bed.

Pete, or the small part of him that was currently controlling the idle Toussant, had kept him alive, hydrated, and sustained for the past ten days, but otherwise, it was dormant. He was just watching, waiting to see if anything would happen.

In his rampage through the base, the real Pete - or, more accurately, Jeeves and his obscenely powerful computer - had scoured the compound's data network for any traces of information, not only about the Praetorian operations but for Toussant himself. As far as they could tell, the Praetorians had no idea that Toussant had been captured, tortured, killed, and his mind replaced with a tiny sliver of Pete's power. The idea for leaving him here was the small hope that the owners of this base would notice its radio silence, try to make contact, fail, and then send someone to investigate. Those people would find Toussant, discover he was alive, albeit severely injured, and then bring him back into the fold from where he could continue his ruse as a mole inside the organization.

It was a long shot. Toussant had never really worked the way the real Pete had intended; events had overtaken them. Pete had hoped that Toussant would have had time to get back to the Praetorians and reinsert himself into the Order long before Pete came into contact with them. In fact, Pete hadn't even known about the Praetorian's existence when the plan had been formed and hadn't been able to discern it from his brutal 'interrogation' of the living Toussant because Toussant himself hadn't known a huge amount more than Pete had. All he had known was that he worked for a cell of Inquisitors who answered to someone in Rome. Pete got that information out of his head; it fit the theory he already had, and he never looked into it any further. Now, everything left of Toussant's knowledge was gone, ripped out of his head with the rest of his conscious mind. All that was left of Becky's murderer was enough knowledge to allow him to function in his role effectively enough not to get caught and how to make contact with his handler.

In this case, his handler had been Tiberius. Not because Tiberius had any more information than Toussant did, it was just that Tiberius was the one who passed on his sealed orders and supplied logistical support to allow that mission to be carried out. It really was a genius way of setting things up; it was the very definition of the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. Toussant and Tiberius, despite their comparative rank within the Praetorians, knew next to nothing about the order further than the things they could see right in front of them.

Still, the plan could theoretically work. If the standard operating procedure held true to the people who would hopefully come to investigate the compound, they would simply find a survivor, take him back to base, discover he was Toussant, debrief him, treat him, and put him back to work. Or they would kill him, and Becky's murderer - or at least his physical body - would join the rest of him in receiving some small measure of justice.

Until then, Toussant would just wait. Pete had decided that a few more days would be about the limit of his patience, at which point Toussant would wake up, stumble to the nearest intact computer - which happened to be the one on Tiberius's desk - and try to make contact with... someone. That part of the plan was less clear, but Pete had the passwords to get into the system, and if anyone had a way of contacting the higher-ups in the order, it would have been Tiberius.

Winging it seemed to be about par for the course when it came to plans like this. But to be fair to him, Pete was operating on some very limited information and it was unlikely that anyone else could have come up with something any better given the same options.

So, for now, he waited.

For ten long, very uncomfortable days, he waited.

Okay, to be accurate, he did nothing. He just sort of switched off. Toussant, when not being directly controlled by Pete, was in something akin to a coma. There was just no conscious mind to control anything or even to observe the passage of time. He was just a shell; he was a puppet in a very literal meaning of the term, and just like a puppet, he just lay there limply when the strings weren't being pulled.

But then the noises came.

They were faint at first. The rumbling of an engine in the distance, then a few more joining it. The power feeding Toussant's mind suddenly surged, letting him pick up on the sounds much more clearly while also filtering out the scratching rustles of softly falling dust and soot. There were voices, quiet and cautious, that was to be expected. The base had suddenly and inexplicably gone dark, then found in a state that suggested that an entire army brigade had smashed into it with full force. There was no way for the Praetorians to know if the enemy was still here or if they had left any sort of traps waiting for them.

To be honest, Pete - the real Pete - had considered leaving a few surprises for their arrival but had decided against it. The more people killed anonymously, the fewer people there would be to interrogate later. More than that, he had been really fucking tired after his ordeal, and the fight that had followed it, and his rescue team had been more than a little eager to get the hell out of Dodge.

Toussant listened, tracing the footsteps and the hushed whispers as they got closer. It took them hours, painstakingly working through the compound, sounding like they were checking every single one of the hundreds of bodies left behind and clearing every single room. It was understandable; the vast majority of the dead had been human, and although the Praetorians put a significantly less amount of importance on the lives of those people, it was impossible to visually distinguish them from the Evos or Inquisitors they were clearly looking for.

Throughout it all, there were gasps and shocked murmurs, hushed voices of disbelief that they had suffered such a massive loss. There were whispered theories that the enemy, whoever they were, had taken their own dead with them because they weren't finding any bodies that didn't belong there, and they couldn't conceive of a reality where not a single kill had been scored by their side.

Closer and closer, they edged.

Finally, they found the conference room containing the bodies of the compound prefects. The dozen dead Evos lining the room, the scores of bullet-ridden guards behind an ominously empty chair. The one man with the splinter of table impaling his brain, the one man with a statue of some long venerated Roman general where his skull once was, and, finally, the body of the man they had been looking for. Tiberius.

Pete remembered what he looked like when he left him. Physically, he looked fine, completely uninjured in the battle for the compound. The damage had been done to his mind; his psyche burned to ashes in the heat of Pete's unquenchable rage. But to the outside eyes, this only translated to a look of unspeakable agony permanently etched into the old man's face. His eyes were wide and bulging, his mouth was twisted into a grimace of pure pain and suffering, and behind it all was the unmistakable look of the one thing the Praetorians never expected to see.

Fear.

Terror, dread, call it what you will; it was something the Praetorians were not used to seeing, let alone experiencing. They operated from the darkness, unseen until it was too late, and often not even then. This was something that Toussant understood instinctively. To feel fear, you must be able to be seen, tracked, hunted, and hurt by the thing you are afraid of. There must be some conceivable consequence to what you were doing if you were caught. The trick to overcoming this was simple yet effective: Don't be seen. Don't get caught. Be a ghost. Ghosts feared nothing.

So Toussant, or the small sliver of Pete inside him, smiled inwardly at the gasps of shock and horror when the face of Tiberius was finally found by the team clearing the compound. Seeing their people, their brethren, killed in combat, their horrific wounds still on display for the team to see, was one thing. It was to be expected; they were all soldiers in a war, after all. But to see Tiberius like that was something different altogether.

As slow as the investigation had been up until that point, it was significantly slower afterward. Each step, each man those steps belonged to, seemed to be filled with the dread of the unknown. They had no idea what could have caused a scene like this; they were clueless about what could cause a man as well-known, well-respected, and revered as Tiberius to meet such a terrifying end, and their whispered conversations about him grew increasingly louder as they approached the central control room, and Tiberius's office off to one side of it.

"There should be more," one whispered voice said to another.

"What?" the second voice said.

"There are people missing. Lots of them."

"How many?"

"About a hundred, so far. And I can't see us finding all of them in the control room. There isn't space for them all."

"Maybe they got out."

"Without making contact?"

"Fuck, man, I don't know. They wouldn't have let themselves be captured."

"So where the hell are they?"

"Jesus, I don't know! The hell do you want me to say?"

"Sorry, sorry," The first voice let out a shuddering breath, "Just a little freaked out."

"We're all feeling it, man; just focus on the mission, and then we can get the fuck out of here."

"I'm trying, but... his face."

"Don't. Just... Don't. I don't want to even think about that shit."

"Yeah, well, you weren't the one who had to take a picture of it."

"I know. Look, let's just get this last room cleared. Thermals showed a heat signature up ahead. We need to check that out; then we can leave. Let the prefects deal with it, and we can get a drink or something."

"Heat signature," the first voice scoffed. "This place is a damned tomb. I will bet good money that it's a computer that's been left on or something. Maybe a smoldering fire. Everyone here is dead!"

The footsteps seemed to stop. "What the fuck are you looking for with this?" The second voice hissed. "Do you want to quit? Do you want to go back and tell them we didn't look because we were afraid? How do you think that will go? We have a job to do, and we're gonna do it. So cut the bitching out and shut the fuck up!"

A third voice whispered in the darkness, interrupting them. Louder, and somehow even sounding like it held more authority. "Have you checked the control center yet?"

"Oh, er, we're on our way now, Sir."

There was a pause. "Well, come on then, get a move on!"

"You're coming, Sir?"

"I'm looking for a friend. I haven't found him yet."

"Sir," the first voice said. "The numbers don't add up. There should be more..."

"I know. That's a conversation for later. Let's find who we can so we can take them home. We can figure out what happened here when we're back at base. So stop standing around like a bunch of scared children and move your asses!"

"Yes, Sir." The second voice said before, a few seconds later, the sounds of shuffling feet started echoing to Toussant's ears again.

It must have taken another thirty to forty minutes for the footsteps to get closer, but the whispered conversation stopped, no doubt because of the apparently superior officer in their midst. Toussant could hear them getting closer, stopping every few minutes and muttering something about finding and checking another dead body or tapping out a few clicks on an ominously dead computer terminal. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the door to the office scraped open.

With the rubble from the partially collapsed ceiling littering the ground, the door could only open about halfway before it got wedged onto something and wouldn't open any wider. The first of the three men squeezed himself through the gap and into the room. "We have another body," he sighed, shining the light slung under the barrel of his rifle onto Toussant first and then around the rest of the room. "And yup, the computer in here is working. That would be the heat source."

"Check him anyway," The second man hissed as he clambered through the doorway and into the office. He stopped to try and shove it open a few more inches, but it wouldn't budge.

The first man sighed and trudged over to the rubble pile and the office's lone occupant, yanking the glove off his hand and pressing two fingers against Toussant's neck. There was a pause, then a gasp. "Holy shit, he's alive!"

"What??"

"I've got a pulse, he's alive. Alert the medics! Gunshot wound to the head; pulse is weak, but it's there!"

"Fuck, fuck, okay. I'm calling it in now!" there was the sound of rustling clothing, then the crackle of a radio. "Ops, this is team four. We have a survivor; I repeat, we have a survivor! We need medical asap!"

"Received four. What is your location?" a static-y voice warbled through the radio.

"Prefect's office, just off the control room. The patient is unconscious; breathing is..." The first man stooping over him made another motion, and the smell of breath became stronger as he lowered his head to Touusant's face.

"It's shallow, labored, but it's there," he said. The second man relayed the information.

"Received four. Medical is on their way with stretchers."

"Send in an engineer, too; the door can't be opened fully, and we're not getting him out until it is," came the reply from the second man.

"Copy, four. Well done. Keep us informed."

"Got it, Ops." The radio was put away. "Sir, you're going to want to see this." The second man called out, much louder than any of the other speech had been up until that point.

There was a sigh from the other side of the door before the third and final man squeezed himself through the gap. There were a few heavy footsteps as the officer came closer, and then...

"Well, well, well," the voice came in that thick Italian accent that Pete knew so well.

The power surged inside Toussant as Pete, the real Pete, froze in his tracks in the castle over a thousand miles away. The entirety of Pete's consciousness rushed from his natural body, through the connection to the man formerly known as Toussant, and into the room with the one person he had been hunting for all of this time.

Marco.

********

My eyes shot open. The man who had been leaning over Toussant - a young man, no more than twenty-five years old, with thick dark hair and a dusting of what young men would incorrectly call stubble on his face - blinked and frowned. "Sir?"

"This is Jean-Pierre Toussant; he was one of us until Pete, my friend, broke him and took over his body. Isn't that right, Pete?" Marco smiled as he noticed my eyes opened.

"Wait, What? They can do that?" The first man was backing away rather rapidly at this point.

"Oh no, no one else is that powerful; there's only him. He's watching us right now. Think you can say hello from in there, my old student?"

I growled and pulled myself up to a sitting position, glaring at the man, but didn't say anything.

"There he is," Marco smiled. "So I'm guessing you were less than receptive to the Praetorian's offer." Marco gestured around at the room surrounding us. "I did warn Tiberius that you wouldn't be easy to break, but assuming this was all you, even I have to say that I'm impressed."

I opened my mouth to answer but thought better of it. I could feel that familiar stirring inside me.

Marco saw it, crouching down to get himself at eye level with me. "You can't speak, that's a shame."

"Can... can he attack us?" The first man stammered, his eyes flashing from me to Marco and then to the other stunned man in the room.

"No, that's not how Evo powers work," Marco rolled his eyes. "He has to be touching you. This is more like watching us through a camera. He can see and hear everything; he can even control Toussant's body, but he can't do anything." Marco grinned triumphantly. "He hasn't thought this through. That is your problem, Pete. You never see the bigger picture. All bark, no bite, I believe the saying goes. You have the power - or at least you think you do - but you aren't smart enough to use it properly. You should have joined me, Pete. I would have taught you everything you could ever hope to learn. But I'm afraid you have made that impossible now."

"We should kill him." The second man said uncertainly.

"Oh yes, we will, but not quite yet. Pete is the friend I was looking for. I had hoped he had escaped with the others, but it seems he may be responsible for all of this."

"What?!?" The second man gawked. "One Evo did all this??"

"Now you see why Rome wants him so badly." Marco was still grinning smugly, but the other two men had noticeably started to back away. They had seen Tiberius's face; they may not have known what I was capable of, and Marco - with that comment about having to touch him to do anything to him - certainly didn't, but they knew enough to understand that Tiberius had died a truly horrific death at my hands, and that was something they wanted no part of. "Oh, don't worry." He chuckled. "He can't do anything. He's only able to sit there, watching his betters beat him. Pete, I need you to know something. We could have been allies, but you chose a different road, so here is what is going to happen next. First, I am going to make sure the Conclave thinks that you are the one who killed Uri. Don't expect me to tell you how, you wouldn't understand, but I have ways of making them believe me." Interesting. He didn't know what had happened to the Conclave or to his friends there. "Once they have ostracized you and are hunting you, I am going to kill Charlotte and make sure the Sect thinks that was you, too. Then, I am going to turn all of the Praetorian might onto Isabelle and the Inquisition. Once they are crushed, and once you have seen the consequences of fighting us, and once you have begged for it.... And you will beg... then, maybe I will kill you myself. Or I may let them do it for me, but much slower." He smiled menacingly.

I couldn't believe the arrogance of this man, which, in turn, brought up some new questions. Could he really be this stupid? I mean, Marco was old, about one hundred and eighty, and he seemed to have spent a good portion of that time spreading his influence and working with the Praetorians. He had gotten away with it for this long, so maybe it was just hubris. Maybe he thought he was untouchable. But he clearly didn't know that the Conclave was no more, he didn't know the Sect had been purged of any Praetorian influence, and that reference to his making the Conclave believe I was responsible for Uri's death was clearly a less than subtle nod at his corruption, which I not only knew about, but had banished from anyone and everyone I had found it in, including myself. How could he not know these things? And what did he think his Bond Villain-esque monologue was going to achieve? Did he really think, after he had spent the last few hours walking through the burned-out remains of his last plan, that telling me about his new one was going to scare me?

But then that was the point, wasn't it? Marco had already shown himself to be a master manipulator, he had played Uri and me like fiddles for the entire time this had all been going on. He had, for reasons that still confused me, hinted that I go to Thomas in his letter when the Archon had nothing to do with the Praetorians. Did Marco leave something there to implicate me in the event of Marco's death? The more the man spoke, the angrier I was getting, but also, the more confusing it was all becoming. He couldn't possibly hope to beat me by force, not head-on, anyway, not after seeing the devastation in the compound. Did he really believe what he was saying about needing to be in physical contact with someone to use my powers? Did he think I wandered around the compound, killing people where they stood by walking up to them and touching them all? How could he possibly still think that? I mean, that wasn't even how dueling worked, let alone actually fighting. Was he really that clueless? The obvious answer was no, he wasn't. But if he thought for a second that I could hurt him, and if all of this was an act, why the hell was he putting his very punchable face only a few inches from mine? He clearly thought he was safe, but how? How could he possibly think that?

The only answer, the only conceivable answer, was that he was working on some very inaccurate information. Perhaps he had to touch someone to transmit his powers. He had, after all, had to touch me to awaken me, and now that I thought about it, that had taken a fairly large portion of his power to do so. Perhaps he and other Evos had a limit on how much they could transmit over distance. Maybe dueling only worked without touch because both participants agreed to be involved and weren't blocking. Maybe that was one of the reasons Charlotte was so shocked by what I made her do back at my apartment, again without touching her. Perhaps it took a lot more power to exercise power without touch and that is why the thirteen armies who attacked me in this very compound had needed to combine their powers to do it. I mean, he was spectacularly wrong, but it was the only explanation of how he could still think that. Had he really learned nothing? Was he really so lost in his own sense of invulnerability that he left no room in his plans for the possibility that he was mistaken? Was his arrogance really so absolute?

It didn't matter, or at least it didn't matter now. It was time to put the fear of god into him and finally make my point.

"You're looking thoughtful, Pete," Marco mocked. "Are you trying to think of a way out? Are you trying to think of a way to protect the people you care about? Are you trying to think of a way to save yourself from what's coming?"

"No, I'm just wondering how someone can be so stupid with only one head," I sighed. "I mean, you're probably not the dumbest mother fucker on Earth, but you'd better pray that they don't die."

Marco blinked, his mouth dropping open in shock.

"Seriously," I said, tilting my head to look at him. "I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you, but I bet it's hard to pronounce."

"But... But..."

I turned to the other two men in the room. "I think you'd better leave. Your boss and I are going to have a chat, and you don't want to be here for that."

The two men looked at me, then at each other, then bolted for the door. I pulled myself to my feet and rolled my neck. Ten days of holding the same position without moving had made Toussant's body ache in places I didn't even know he had, but all of that pain and discomfort was washed away by the joy I felt at Marco's panicked expression. And that joy was swept aside by the pure rage and loathing that was bubbling up inside my chest. I knew what was coming, but he didn't. He was about to find out, though.

I watched the men squeeze through the small gap in the door, one after the other. The second man, the one who was left waiting as the first pushed through before him, just stared at me in panic as I eyeballed him. Marco was on his feet now, too, and was backing away as well, but as soon as the second of his friends crossed the threshold and out into the control room, the heavy metal door slammed closed behind him with a simple flick of my wrist.

I finally turned my attention back to the man of the hour.

"You seem to be operating on some faulty assumptions, my friend," I said menacingly. "First of all, the Conclave already knows about Uri's death, I told them. And while I was there, I killed all of your friends, every single one of them with even the smallest link to the Praetorians. Thomas is dead, too. The Conclave, as you know it, is gone. The same goes for the Sect; all of your little spies have been rounded up and captured. Your little trick to make people believe you? Your influence? Yeah, I figured that one out a while ago; I've ripped it out of every person I have found it in, including myself, Charlotte, and every innocent person in the Conclave; it was a nice trick, but that advantage is over now."

"But... How? Nobody is that..." He was backing further away now, every step taking him closer and closer to a door that wouldn't be opened by anything smaller than a nuclear detonation on the other side of it.

"You've been a very naughty boy, Marco," I stalked after him. "And then you went and made it worse by making more stupid threats. So now I am going to tell you what is going to happen. I'm not going to kill you, Marco, not for a long time. I am going to keep you alive. I am going to make you watch as I dismantle everything you hold dear. I am going to make sure your Praetorian friends are dead and buried, their entire order burned to the ground before your eyes. Every hope, every dream, every aspiration you have ever had going up in smoke with it. But there is no hope of you dying quickly. I am going to make you suffer. I am going to hurt you in ways that they haven't invented words for yet. I won't enjoy it, I won't relish it, but I will do it anyway! I am going to show you the real meaning of words like fear, pain, and loss. You are going to intimately understand what it feels to be beaten. And then, I am going to let you be judged."

"Judged?" Marco blinked, his horrified face suddenly scrunching up with confusion.

"Oh yes, Marco, Judged. Just like your friends were, let me show you. Look," I smirked evilly, "no hands."

My will, my mind, all of my rage and fury, every ounce of pain and regret, my seemingly unending hunt for justice, every shred of my power, and every righteous iota of the Mantle's judgment - all of it - smashed into Marco.

Existence blinked away to nothingness.

********

The world was fire.

Everything burns when put under the right conditions, and right now, all Marco was able to see was fire. Flames danced over everything.

Of course, it wasn't his city that was falling apart in the inferno; that would have been too easy, that would have been too quick; this was just a... simulation. A vision. A hallucination. I suppose I should thank Sterling for that little trick, but Marco didn't know that.

His face, as it twisted back and forth to look at the firestorm around him, was a mosaic of mixed emotions, ranging from astonishment to fear, to pain, to panic, a few in between, and then back again. I didn't know exactly how he expected this rendezvous to go when he first found Toussant, let alone the real me, but it sure as shit wasn't this. Everything Marco was feeling was fed to him by my own version of the theater that Sterling had in his city after our fight. The wind, the storm that was my most vivid memory from that event, was now blowing the sheets of flame into monstrous, terrifying shapes around him, but that was far from the scariest thing that haunted the burning remains of his city.

I had never seen Marco's city before. I guess I knew the reason for that now, but it was a thing of beauty. Or at least the version of it not being burned to the ground was. It reminded me of Venice, or more accurately, the picture of Venice I had always had in my mind. There weren't many streets, not compared to cities of similar sizes like Charlotte's, Fiona's or Jerry's. Instead, at least half of them were taken up with canals. Some were small, narrow waterways that flowed between the rows of sandstone-colored buildings with red-tiled roofs. Others were grand, wide arteries that flowed outward from the city center. It was a well-structured city, too, and I was surprised to find myself admiring the organization of the mind it represented.

Those canals, especially the larger ones, didn't only function as highways for his swarms of ghosts but as defensive barriers not unlike my own inner walls. Except where mine had been constructed purely as a response to my own childhood traumas, his had been meticulously and deliberately placed to make sure travel from one part of his city - of his mind - and another was made more difficult for anyone trying to wander around. Bridges became bottlenecks, a place where he could mount a new line of defense against anyone attacking his city and his prized library, which, incidentally, was surrounded by its own moat of water and more thoroughly defended than even his palace.

That made sense, I supposed. If the Romans were right and knowledge really was power, then Marco could be considered one of the most powerful men on Earth. His library was even larger than mine, and that was no small feat, considering mine dwarfed any other building in any other city that I had ever seen. More than that, it seemed to be split into different wings. Just one look at it let me understand how it was organized. One wing for, predictably, the storage of information and of memories, another for the acquisition of more through his corruption of others, and another wing again for the apparatus used to manipulate that information for his own gain. It was part data storage, part listening post, and part intelligence agency, all rolled into one.

Sterling's theater had been a thing of beauty; it had let me come up with this particular ruse, but Marco's library was something else entirely.

Of course, Marco wasn't seeing what I was seeing. I was seeing his pristine city with its terrified owner stumbling backward through the streets and a whole host of ghosts watching him in pure confusion.

He was seeing something else entirely, and I was the master conductor, feeding him every twisted incarnation of destruction that I could think of. To him, his world was burning. Every building had flames and thick black smoke billowing out of the windows. Masonry crumbled to the streets, and some splashed into the canals, which, in turn, were boiling under the relentless heat of the whirlwinds of fire raging above them.

In 1945, the United States dropped two Atomic bombs on Japan, apparently single-handedly ending the Second World War. What is lesser known was the firebombing of Tokyo that happened a few months earlier. A city made almost entirely of wooden structures doesn't do well when introduced to incendiary bombs, and the blazing inferno didn't only flatten sixteen square miles of prime Japanese real estate, it ended the lives of almost 100,000 people in a single night. I remembered studying the event at school; I remembered trying to visualize what it would look like to have the air outside of my school become so hot that the oxygen itself ignited, how it would feel to be so hot that human beings spontaneously burst into flame just from being caught up in the maelstrom. I remembered trying to imagine a conflagration of such biblical proportions that God himself would have stopped to take notes in case another Sodom and Gomorrah tantrum became necessary.

Nuclear bombs like the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few months later were horrific in their own right, but they weren't really bombs, at least not by conventional standards. They were more like falling physics experiments. The flash from those explosions vaporized the people close to the blast zone and seared their shadows onto the concrete of buildings they were close to. The terrifying thing about Tokyo, however, was that normal, standard weaponry, the same stuff found in modern fireworks, managed to do the exact same thing on an almost equal scale.

That is what Marco was seeing. That is what filled his vision as he stumbled through his city toward the perceived safety of his Palace. Of course, I was older now. I had seen war, and I had seen what fire does to people and to buildings. I had heard the screams and smelled the stench of burning flesh. I wasn't a naive, overly imaginative child anymore, so my inspirations were not only more graphic but much more realistic as well.

Besides, I had an actual fucking Dragon helping me out.

Through the twisting and gyrating towering pillars of flame, Marco got his first glimpse of the power that would one day pass judgment over him. Swooping high above the firestorm, its powerful wings beating hard, keeping it aloft and also adding to the downdrafts that collapsed the towers of flames onto the defenseless and hopelessly vulnerable buildings of Marco's city. The roars were loud enough to be heard even over the deafening roars of the fires it had created. New Dragons, smaller and made entirely of flame, curled out of the shattered windows of ruined buildings, flying into the air for a few dozen yards before being absorbed back into the fires; Marco's eyes followed them all. I made sure he saw them.

The funny part was, none of them were even the real danger to him. He could see the fires, he could hear their roars, he could feel their heat, so his mind told him that they were real. But they weren't; they were an illusion, carefully crafted to show him the hell of his own making that I was capable of unleashing on him.

He stumbled to the ground, the heat of the cobblestones bubbling and blistering the skin on his palms as he pushed himself back to his feet, and a bloodcurdling scream tore from his lips. He started to run. His composure was broken, his sense of confusion was too great, and the seemingly universal balance between fight or flight had finally come down on one side. He ran for his life.

He scrambled through the streets, ducking beneath flames that weren't really there, dodging the falling debris that only he could see, screaming at the ghosts of fire that I was feeding to his mind. It would have been so easy to end him now, but it wasn't enough. Even the Dragon agreed with that. The Mantle had ended the lives of almost a hundred people in the Conclave as easily as snuffing out a candle and had done it with little more than a thought. But those people, in the grand scheme of things, were only guilty of a handful of crimes, which - to an extraordinarily lenient jury - could possibly be seen as a result of brainwashing.

Marco was not those people. Marco was different. He was so very, very different.

Marco may not have started the whole war, but he was certainly responsible for its escalation. He had been the one who had prompted the Praetorians to ramp up their efforts to unify the species. He had been the one who had suggested the invasion of Ukraine as a pretext for Praetorian expansion. He had been the one who had tried to end the threats posed by Uri, and potentially me, at the party.

He had killed Faye.

He had suggested the kidnapping of Becky and the targeting of Philippa and Evie. He had told the Judge to go after my parents.

And it was all done for greed.

For power.

I knew this now. The Dragon was exposing the man's sins as if he were opening and reading from a children's book. I knew that feeling; every crime, every misdeed, every action that I had ever taken that could be called even slightly morally questionable, all of it was laid bare to the Mantle. Marco was no different; he was just too consumed by the fear of the fire to notice his own sense of guilt.

Finally, after only a few minutes of running, which must have seemed considerably longer to my former mentor, Marco reached the door to his Palace. He grabbed hold of the handles, ignored the hiss of his skin melting against the heat of the iron door handles, and pulled.

Only to find his own mind locked.

Of course, it was locked. He wasn't in his mind; he was in mine. He turned, fear and dread painted onto his face. He watched the dance of dragon fire around him for a few more moments before his eyes finally fell onto me. "How are you doing this?"

"Power," I shouted back, my voice loud enough to rumble a few buildings around us and the very ground on which he stood.

"This is not how Evo power works, though!"

I smiled a vicious, malevolent smile. "Give a child a pencil, teach him to hold it, teach him what it is called, teach him to press the nib against paper and draw a line. Spend decades teaching him to create artwork with that pencil, teach him all the different ways it can be used for different effects, teach him how it breaks, how it needs to be sharpened, how the opposite end can be used to rub out the mistakes made, teach him how it can draw on more than paper... teach him these things and you will have an adult who knows how to use a pencil. But take an adult who had never seen a pencil before, thrust one into his hands, and expect him to understand what the child was taught, and you will get nothing. You will just have an adult holding a sharp piece of wood. Then piss that man off, and he will drive that pencil right through your fucking eye! I never learned what you learned, Marco; I was never told anything about how Evo power works. That is something you were supposed to do. But, it turns out, you didn't know how it works either. So yes, Mentor, this is exactly how real power works, and it is the exact power that is going to burn your world to the ground!"

"You can never win!" He screamed back, seeming to accept a fate that wasn't coming.

I laughed. "Can you feel it, Marco? Can you feel that sense of guilt and sorrow growing inside you? Can you feel the regret for the crimes you have committed, for the lives you have ruined, for the deaths you have caused? Can you feel it building? That is the Dragon; that is what it means to bear the Mantle; that is the judgment that you and all of your Praetorian friends will receive before I am through with you. I don't need to beat you, you son of a bitch. All I have to do is make sure you are judged, and you will beat yourself."

"No, they will come for you." He screamed louder, pressing himself against what must have been the searing heat of the wooden doors. "They know where you are! They know you are at the Inquisitor's castle. You're about to die. I hoped you were here. I wanted to find you ready to join us, but they said you were there. I didn't believe them, but they will kill you before you get to me!"

I blinked, then growled. "Good, let them come. The Dragon is hungry. But once I am done with them, you know where I'm coming next, don't you? You know what is waiting for you. Tell your friends, Marco, tell them I am coming to Rome to end this. To end them!"

Marco screamed as a wall of fire burst from my eyes and rushed at him. But it never made contact.

In the blink of an eye, we were back in the office. Marco yelped, tripping over a shattered bit of masonry on the ground and landing hard on his ass as I stared down at him. At that moment, the heavy metal door to the office crashed open, my hold on it released. Five men, all of them armed, stepped into the room, all of them with their rifles raised at me or at least at Toussant's body. I grinned evilly at them and then back down at Marco. "Still no hands!"

The door suddenly slammed closed again, but this time with the same force as if it had been hit by a runaway freight train. Two of the men in its path were immediately smashed out of the way. One of them hit the opposite wall, his body crumbling as too many bones were broken to maintain the integrity of his body. The second man was caught between the door and the door frame and was simply crushed into mulch and a cloud of blood spray. The other three wasted no time and opened fire.

Bullets ripped through the air, each of them traveling far too fast for the human eye to see, but mine were not human eyes. The bullets slowed until they were hovering in the air in a scene reminiscent of The Matrix. Looking back up at the intruders, I chuckled, the sound bouncing ominously off the walls as each bullet slowly rotated one hundred and eighty degrees to face them. The three remaining men had only enough time to let their eyes widen as three rifle clips worth of bullets smashed back into them like a shotgun blast. They were dead before their bodies hit the ground, each of them punctured more than a dozen times by their own bullets.

I reached down to the ground, picking up a shard of glass that had come from one of Tiberius's wall-mounted picture frames, and turned my burning gaze back to Marco.

I stepped closer, blood starting to drip from my hand from the pressure with which I was holding the shard. He began to back up frantically, clambering over the bodies of his friends without a single downward glance, his legs kicking furiously to push himself away from me. But I followed him every step of the way, getting closer and closer until his back finally hit the wall, and I was standing over him.

"I want you to remember this, Marco. I want you to picture this every night you close your eyes. I want it to be the first thing you think of every morning, the last thing on your mind before you try to sleep, only to have more dreams of me, of this. But most of all, I want you to understand..."

I drove the shard of glass into my own throat, watching the look of horror on his face as I hissed out Toussant's final words. "You're next!"

I ripped the shard to the side, opening Toussants neck and spraying the arterial blood all over Marco. I made sure Toussant held his eyes as his body collapsed forward and onto my terrified-looking former mentor. I made sure he was drenched in his blood. I made sure that his eyes stayed firmly locked onto Marco's until the light behind them finally faded out.

I made sure Marco would remember.

********

I sucked in a deep breath as my mind snapped back to my body, and I looked around the hallway. I'm not going to lie; it was more than a little disorientating.

"Pete? Jesus are you okay? What happened?" Bob had his hands on my shoulders and seemed like he had been shaking me, trying to wake me up.

"Marco," I croaked, my voice raspy and harsh. "He was at the Praetorian compound. He found Toussant."

"Jesus. What happened? Did you...?"

I shook my head. "I gave him a warning. But I know where they are now. I need to get to Rome. But..." I coughed, trying to clear my throat, my thoughts were still a little fuzzy from the sudden return to my body.

"Come on, you were out for more than an hour. I think you need to lay down, or at least let one of our doctors take a look at you."

"No!" I suddenly looked up, my mind clearing as I grabbed Bob's arm. "They know where we are. Marco said it, he said they are coming!"

Bob's eyes widened, his gaze shifting instantly from me to the door to Emma's office down the hall behind me. "When?"

"Now! They're here!"

"Shit! I've got to get to Isabelle, but..." his eyes went back to the office door again.

"Go!" I yelled at him, shoving him a step back along the hall toward the main meeting room where his wife was presumably still waiting. "Alert the guards and get Isabelle somewhere safe. I'll get Emma!"

"Okay," he said after a few seconds of flustered thought. "Tell Emma to meet us at the main armory; she will know where that is. If you can't make it, or if we are overrun, just get her out of here and tell her to take you to the place we vacationed when she was six. She will know what I mean. We will meet you there!"

I nodded once and spun on my heels, and Bob did the same. There was no need for a parting 'good luck', nor was there time. My mind was already reaching out to the surrounding countryside. Although I could easily and quickly spot a whole bunch of voids in the landscape of my senses, it was impossible to tell which of them, if any, were hostile and which were the legitimate guards of the castle. With that idea proving to be less than useless, I decided to change tacts.

"Jerry, can you hear me?"

It had been months since I had topped up Jerry in order for him to heal Henry in Ukraine, but he still had a small amount of my power left in his well, meaning we were still connected.

"Hey Pete, yeah, I can hear you. Whatsup?"

"We are under attack! Get the girls and get to Isabelle, help Bob to keep her safe. If you can't get there, then get the hell out, make your way back to the Sect."

"What? Pete, slow down! What's going on?"

"The Praetorians, they know where we are! They..." The ground shook as a massive explosion rocked the castle. I couldn't tell exactly where it came from, only that it wasn't close. Almost immediately after its echoes faded into the sky, the unmistakable sound of gunfire replaced it.

"Fuck, Pete, I think that was an explosion!"

"No shit! Get the girls and get moving!"

"Got it. Protect Isabelle and Bob. If that's not possible, get back to the Sect and wait for you. What are you going to do?"

"I've got to get Emma and Rhodri, then I will be right behind you. Jerry?"

"Yeah?"

"No unnecessary risks. Keep the girls alive!"

"You can count on me, Pete. I'll get it done."

I cut the connection just as I barged into Emma's office. Both she and Rhodri were on their feet, looking around and flinching at the sound of gunfire in the distance. "Pete, What's going on?"

"The Praetorians have found us; we're under attack!" I answered quickly.

"What? Why?" Emma gasped.

"Shits and giggles!" I snapped back as I slammed the office door closed behind me. "Why do you think? I told you this would happen. Now, I have to get you to the armory. Get whatever shit you need, and let's move!"

"But I have to get to my Mom and Dad!" Emma argued.

"Who do you think sent me here for you??"

"Emma, I think you need to listen to him. He knows what he's doing." Rhodri answered, understandably trying to de-escalate the situation and get moving.

"Urgh, fine!" She snarled. "But if you have caused this..."

"Yeah yeah, argue and walk at the same time," I barked back. "We don't have time for this, and if you were anyone else, I would have already left you here. Now let's go! Rhodri, you stay one side of her, I stay the other. If we get into trouble, you get her head down and keep her safe, I will deal with whoever is attacking!"

"You mean you'll kill them!" Emma screamed at me.

"Yup. That's the plan!"

"I'm not going to let you use me to justify more killing!"

"Oh really?" I yanked open the office door again, letting the sounds of gunfire back into the room. "What do you think they're doing? Those are your guards, fighting, killing, probably dying, for you. To protect you!"

"But..."

"But nothing! This fight is here whether you like it or not. The monsters have found us. You can do things my way, or you can take your chances out there on your own. Choose quickly!" I stared her down, my eyes unyielding in their gaze.

Emma tried to hold them, trying to match my stare, but she flinched away from a burst of gunfire that sounded much closer than the ones that came before it. "Okay," she finally slumped.

"Good, stay between us. If we go down, or if we get separated, run! Don't try to hide, don't try to fight, and for fuck sake, don't try to reason with them; just run!"

She looked at me, something changing for a moment behind her eyes. "But, what about you?"

"Don't worry about me; I'm an animal, remember."

She winced, or at least I think she did. I was already turning around to poke my head out through the door and into the corridor. "Pete," Rhodri said quietly. I turned back to face him. "I don't know if I'm strong enough to..."

"Then don't," I answered back, trying to keep my voice calm and level. "If shit goes south, just keep your head down, keep her head down, and get to the armory. If you can't get there, just get out. I will find you."

"But what if..."

"I will find you!"

He nodded, and I turned back to Emma. "If you have to leave the castle, your father said to meet him at the place you vacationed when you were six." She frowned for a moment before her eyebrows raised. "Do you understand?"

"Oh, you mean..."

"No, don't say it!" I cut her off. "Not until we are out of here. If they break into our minds, they will know as well, and they'll be waiting for us... and your parents."

Her eyes widened again for a moment before she nodded.

"Okay, are we ready?"

"Ready," Rhodri said after sucking in a deep breath. Emma just nodded again, her arms wrapped around herself protectively and her eyes instinctively flinching away from the increasingly near sounds of automatic gunfire.

"Okay," I said with a deep breath of my own. "Let's go!"