“Surely there’s something that you can do,” Clinton begged.
“I will be paying for your sins for a long time, Clinton. I have neither the ability nor the desire to absolve them. Even before this, you were baiting the EOA into making a move on Vermillion. That is an act directly in contravention of Cabal interests, in service to your personal ambition. If Vermillion hadn’t defused the situation, you’d have antagonised the Network, the EOA, our own people and a potentially valuable ally all in one fell swoop. Thankfully—and true to form—you failed. But for some inexplicable reason, this was the one time that you didn’t let one knock back stop you and did what it took to aggravate them all anyway. You even went above and beyond, throwing them into a frenzy. At least you can die knowing that your actions left a large footprint.”
“You can’t hand me over,” Clinton said angrily. “I’ll tell the Network every clan and Cabal secret I know!”
“I know,” Franklin said sadly. “As much as I hoped that time would temper you into steel, I knew from the beginning that you were pig iron. This is why you were never inducted into our greater secrets. You can’t give the Network information they don’t already know, although I expect they will be very thorough in making sure.”
Franklin got to his feet.
“This is the last time we’ll meet, Clinton. Anything you have left to say, say it now.”
“Uncle, it wasn’t my fault…”
“I meant something new, Clinton. I’ve heard that many times before.”
Franklin made his way back upstairs, where Vermillion was waiting for him.
“That can’t have been easy,” Vermillion said.
“It was a long time coming,” Franklin said. “All of our problems today can be laid at the feet of my mercy. How bad is it?”
“Bad,” Vermillion said. “Magic came within a hair’s breadth of being revealed today. Annabeth Tilden is in what amounts to a berserker rage. The big question mark is this man Asano. I don’t know what he’ll do after what happened.”
“Didn’t the Network take him?”
“I believe the answer to that is complicated,” Vermillion said. “Not least by the question of whether or not they can hold him.”
“I don’t like that Sebastian isn’t with us,” Luc said.
“You think any of us like it?” Paul asked. He was driving the car along the gravel road, through the open landscape of the Australian Bush, with Luc in the passenger seat. The dark sky hid the panorama, forcing him to drive carefully.
“You saw the condition Sebastian was in,” Paul said. “I’ve never seen anyone more in need of healing.”
“That’s exactly my problem,” Luc said. “We all saw what the target did to Sebastian. What if he wakes up?”
“He’s not going to wake up,” Nicolas said from the back seat. “With what we pumped into him, I’m amazed he’s still alive, category two or no. When he finally comes to, I won’t be shocked if we need to get the brain damage healed.”
The three Frenchmen drove along a gravel road in rural New South Wales, heading for a rarely used airstrip. With an overcast night sky and an absence of population centres, the light from their car was a lonely ship in a sea of black.
“What I hate is that we have to fly back out,” Paul said.
“Nothing to be done about it,” Nicolas said. “You can’t force someone through a portal, even if they’re out cold.”
“What about Sebastian?” Luc asked.
“What about him?” Paul asked. “He told us to go without him.”
“I know he said that, but are we really going to just leave him?” Luc asked.
“You’re damn right we are,” Nicolas said. “At this point, he needs to be extracted diplomatically, not tactically. It’s out of our hands. Our job is to get the target home without the locals pinning us down. Sebastian left us his phone so that none of us…”
He looked pointedly at Luc.
“…would be stupid enough to try and make contact.”
“Is the target going to stay unconscious all the way to France?” Paul asked.
“I have some top-ups to keep him out,” Nicolas said. “He’s not waking up any time soon.”
Suddenly, all three felt an aura sweep over them from the boot of the car.
“That’s not possible,” Nicolas said. “Even if he did somehow wake up, he’s collared.”
“Maybe there was something wrong with the collar,” Luc said.
“You think they sent us all this way without checking the collar?” Paul asked.
“Pull the car over!” Nicolas ordered.
As they argued, they heard the boot spring open. Paul pulled the car to a rapid stop, throwing up gravel as he braked hard. The three piled out of the car. They saw the open boot and looked around in the darkness.
“I can’t see a thing,” Luc said.
“He’s going to be a pain to track down like this,” Nicolas said. “Paul, give us some light.”
As they peered out into the black, Paul raised an arm above his head and a large, flaming sphere appeared, floating in the air and shedding a red light. Shockingly, it revealed that the group was surrounded by figures of inky darkness, almost on top of them.
They all reacted immediately. Luc transformed his body into solid stone, while Paul summoned a whip made of fire. Nicolas conjured an assault rifle and started wildly spraying bullets all round them. Bullets were directly conjured into the gun, so he didn’t have to stop and reload. He fed mana into it as quickly as the conjured weapon would take it, spraying out a ceaseless stream of ammunition. The muzzle flash caused a blinding strobe as he swept the gun back and forth, spewing bullets in every direction. When Nicolas finally stopped and the blast of gunfire was replaced by eerie silence, the dark figures were gone, as if they had never been.
“What were those things?” Paul asked.
“You think I know?” Nicolas asked.
“I think you killed them, or drove them off,” Luc said.
As he did, blue and orange lights lit up in the distance, drawing the attention of all three. Focused on the distance, they only noticed the shadowy figure moving behind them in the red light after feeling the sting of a blade slicing along their skin. Nicolas and Paul both received cuts on the neck, but Luc’s bubble shield briefly flared into visibility. It intercepted the attack before it even reached his stone flesh.
The light that had distracted them had dimmed into nothingness.
“Not much of a wound,” Paul said, patting his neck. “I’ve had plenty worse.”
“I bet Sebastian had too,” Nicolas said. “This prick uses poison, genius.”
“Should we start searching?” Luc asked.
“Forget that,” Paul said. “We knew going in that this mission had a high failure chance. I’m not fighting in the dark against the guy that did that to Sebastian.”
“Agreed,” Nicolas said. “Let’s just get in the car and go.”