Rei

Lisa was asleep in bed, the covers pulled over his shoulders when Rei finished his shower and skincare.

Rei pressed a kiss to Lisa’s forehead and went out to the living room.

Sevastyan was on his computer. Rei started clearing away the dishes, sensing his master’s wish for silence.

He was in the kitchen washing up when Sevastyan glided in on bare feet.

Rei turned towards him, bowing his head. “Master.”

“Your phone.”

Rei reached into his pocket and handed it over. His master unlocked it with the passcode and navigated to the contacts. There were only two numbers in the list. Sevastyan started to type in a third. He finished and handed the phone back. His hand was shaking. He wasn’t looking at Rei.

“Master?”

“If you can’t reach me, and you see something happening on the cameras, movement against your friend, or . . . yourself, that number will reach Ellisandre Sollunae. Their personal phone. Sollunae is worth more than the entire police force of the city.”

Rei looked down at his phone, stunned. “Master.” He had an idea of what kind of person Ellisandre Sollunae was from his research on Jun’s new circle of friends. Calling them in was like breaking every vow of separation from the outer world.

Sevastyan turned and walked away.

Rei watched him go and then stared at the number on the screen.

Ellisandre Sollunae.

Why did his master’s voice crack when he said their name, as if he could barely breathe?

Why did it feel like Sevastyan was planning for his death? Sevastyan didn’t have the right. He wasn’t allowed to die. Not before Rei.

He waited in bed until Sevastyan joined Lisa in sleep and then slipped out of Sevastyan’s arms and back to the living room. Across the coffee table, he spread a map of the world, then knelt in front of it with a pencil in one hand and his laptop beside him.

There was a floating frame of a plan in his mind. There were bridges to be crossed, but if they never tried, they would be no different from Anton.

The plan to bring down the Merchari—as Anton had designed it back when Sevastyan was barely a legal adult—had hinged on taking down sections with evidence.

Stacks on stacks of evidence. Sevastyan had carried out collecting that evidence.

Anton was the one who was supposed to have known the legal frameworks and created the relationships with which to use it.

The cover of international science conferences and industry regulation meetings should have given him the ability to navigate the systems necessary to pass that evidence to the proper authorities.

Anton had never done so. While Sevastyan had started working on creating those relationships himself, his networks remained largely criminal and artistic, the ones that were defensible to Raska and her constant manipulation of Sevastyan’s life.

Rei stared at the map. Raska had to fall.

She was a burr in their side, a constant bickering, watching presence, more so than the Yadro or the rest of the Merchari.

She was the only one who continued to question Sevastyan’s loyalty, but only because she questioned his loyalty to her.

If Sevastyan was to start to make connections in law enforcement and deep into government agencies, she had to be removed.

Or they found someone else to make those connections on Sevastyan’s behalf.

Rei tensed, even thinking it, sitting there alone, elbows on his thighs, hands gripped together and pressed to his chin.

He glanced upward, just once, at the ceiling.

Someone else who already had networks. Someone else that no one would suspect of working with Sevastyan.

Someone else with motivation and resources.

Someone who was the reason for why Sevastyan had pushed Anton to take action now.

The answer had been there for weeks while none of them had taken action.

Someone who knew an ex-terror like Ellisandre Sollunae.

Rei had done his research, far beyond what Sevastyan had asked.

He knew not only what the internet would tell him on every person close to Jun now, but also what the dark web and criminal underground chat rooms could reveal.

What he didn’t know yet was how much Sevastyan had gathered on Ellisandre’s past.

Sevastyan putting Ellisandre’s number in his phone tonight felt like a crack in the earth. There was something below that surface.

Jun sat at the center of a powerful ring of people. Business moguls, lawyers, assassins, philanthropists, and patrons of the arts. Between them they carried citizenships from France, the UK, South Korea, and the USA. What they lacked was knowledge of what they were fighting.

But Rei knew.

And he was doing nothing with it. All he had to do was stand up while Sevastyan slept, walk upstairs, make it past their security, not get arrested as a madman, and hand them the database.

Except it wouldn’t be enough. Not to kill the organization. Jun’s people would still need someone inside, individuals willing to do what governments could not. They needed not just the paper knowledge, but the inside experience and the day-to-day monitoring.

Rei’s fingernails bit into the palms of his hands as the tension mounted in his body.

The solution was simple, elegant even. It had to have occurred to Sevastyan already, so why had he not suggested it since leaving Anton’s?

Why were they merely waiting in this setting, pretending to carry out surveillance?

He didn’t know. But until he found out, he could plan. He picked up his pencil.