“It is,” Jason said. “Now that I’m alive, your prisoner is of little use to you, if any. Whatever you might force from her, the Network will get from me quite freely. I’m going to make you an offer, which I hope you take.”
“And what’s that?”
“Give her to me, as soon as I arrive in France. I won’t retaliate and I’ll make sure that the Lyon branch doesn’t get shut out from all the things I’ll be providing the Network.”
“That doesn’t sound like something the other branches or the International Committee will sign off on,” Barbou said.
“I don’t care,” Jason said. “I have what everyone wants, which means I get what I want, so long as I’m willing to share.”
“That’s a peaceful offer from the man who killed a bunch of people on television.”
“I’m trying to do things better. Less killing, more diplomacy.”
“What’s to stop you from coming after my head the moment you have her?”
“My need to make a deal ever again. However all this plays out, word is going to get around about what happens between you and me. If I turn on you immediately, my word becomes worthless. That puts my arrangement with the Network under threat, along with any other deal I might want to make in the future.”
“So, you offer forgiveness?” Adrien asked.
“Call it what you like. I’ve been trying to teach myself to let go of the past so it doesn’t poison my future. You and I can go at it, but I don’t care about taking you down. I care about getting her away from you. If letting you go gets me that and coming after you just endangers her, I’m happy to take her and never see you again.”
“You do remember that I tried to have you kidnapped, then I tried to have you killed. Minutes ago.”
“You’re not the first on either count,” Jason said. “I’m still alive and have a new boat, which is how it usually goes. It’s not always a boat, just whatever valuable stuff they have on them. Look, give her up. She has no value to the Network while I’m in play, which is why you’re trying to kill me but that isn’t working out. I can’t speak for the Network, but as you said, you’ve come at me twice now and you’ve seen the results. I think you’re beginning to understand what happens if you don’t turn her over to me.”
“I have to say that your timing is unfortunate.” Adrien said. “The truth is, Mr Asano, that if you made me this offer as little as three days ago, I’d probably have taken it. Unfortunately, the pressure coming down from the International Committee forced me to take steps I can no longer walk back. Otherwise, I never would have risked making these arrangements personally and you and I would have never had this scintillating chat. The Network won’t let me go, even if you do, and I’ve made promises I need your fellow outworlder to keep.”
“There’s no place you can hide that I won’t find sooner or later, Barbou. There’s no place you can run that I can’t follow.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Adrien said. “Some things are beyond even your abilities, as wondrous as I’m sure they are.”
“There are still ways we can settle this,” Jason said. “I know you don’t think so, but you actually can still walk this back.”
“Mr Asano, I think you’re about to find that even you have limits.”
“Pushing my limits is kind of my thing. If you continue on this path, then you will be the means by which I demonstrate that to the magical world at large. Don’t become the example for the next person.”
“And I thought I was arrogant,” Barbou said. “Good hunting, Mr Asano.”
Jason looked at the phone in his hand after Adrien ended the call, resisting the urge to crush it in his hand. He handed the phone to Bruce.
“Unless he was lying,” Jason told him, “Barbou is going rogue from his own branch. Contact your people. This is going five kinds of sideways.”
Adrien was standing on the roof of the abandoned water treatment plant that sat above the subterranean black site. Asano’s continued survival was a frustration but a result he had accounted for in planning his contingencies. The extra days that Paul had bought him with the International Committee was enough to move his loyalists from the black site before Paul realised he was turning on the Network altogether. Once they extracted the asset securely, he could leave it behind.
He made another call to his EOA contact. The head of the cell he was working with absurdly insisted on going by the code name Heron.
“Heron, your people failed,” Adrien said without preamble.
“Your phone etiquette is very poor,” Heron said. “Perhaps it was not me that failed but the weapons you supplied.”
“We can assign blame later.”
“Says the man whose idea of saying hello is to accuse my people of failure.”
Adrien rolled his eyes.
“I apologise, Heron. Right now, we need to focus on what comes next. Asano survived, which means the IC will come down on us so that he doesn’t break the deal with them.”
“You mean come down on you,” Heron said.
“He took at least some of your people alive, Heron, and they’re talking. If they know about me, you can be certain they know about you. Look, we’ve been working on this for a long time and the outworlder is just a bonus. You want the knowledge and expertise of my people on essence magic for the Engineers of Ascension.”
“If we can bring the secrets of essence magic to the EOA,” Heron said gleefully, “we’ll be propelled to the top levels of the EOA. So long as you hold up your end. Access to the Network’s grid. The means to enter incursion spaces. The ways to use essences.”
“My bridges are burned, Heron,” Adrien said. “Our fates are connected now. Only by making you thrive will I thrive in turn.”
“Alright,” Heron said. “What do you need?”
“I need a team of your elite people to move the asset. She’s a security risk and not all of the personnel here are loyal to me over the Network.”
“Sending them right to the black site is an overt move.”
“The time for secrecy is over,” Adrien said. “It’s the time for bold, decisive men to take action.”
“Do we really need her?”
“My people can give you everything the Network has,” Adrien said. “She is the key to the things the Network doesn’t. Yet. The other outworlder is alive and the Network is realising the potential he offers. If we don’t have her, the EOA falls behind all over again.”
“Very well,” Heron said. “I actually have a strong team on standby, close to your location.”
“Did you have a strike team ready to take me out if I double-crossed you? I respect that.”
Adrien frowned as he sensed magic from below. It shouldn’t be possible for him to sense the painstakingly contained magic unless something went very wrong with the magical array.
“Heron, tell your people to hurry.”
A disgruntled-looking Sebastian reached the top of the outcropping after climbing all the way back up.
“Are you sure you couldn’t portal down?” he asked.
“I have never been to the bottom of this outcropping,” Remy said. “You cannot portal where you have never been. This is a rule of portals. You know this.”
“Then couldn’t we have both gone down and portalled to our next destination from there?”